Banana Bread

Banana Bread

Gluten and Dairy Free

My Little Blue Heron

This is the best banana bread to emerge from my oven since I began baking without gluten. I’m so excited to share this recipe with you.

I hope you’ve been freezing your overripe bananas. Please do this. When you defrost them, you can pour off the liquid. You’ll have the most wonderfully condensed, banana-y flavor. Don’t worry about recalculating weight. If you opt to keep the liquid, that’s fine. (If using fresh bananas, you won’t have any liquid to pour off.)

You will need a kitchen scale. Please buy an inexpensive one for consistent results. Here’s a link. This link is for the United States. It’s an inexpensive scale. Not perfect, but sufficient for this (and other) recipes!

I worked with a couple of different starches and binders, and the winners are: arrowroot and xanthan gum. I prefer maple syrup as a sweetener, and (refined) coconut oil over clarified butter. Clarified butter adds dairy (but not casein) to the recipe. So for those dairy-free humans, this is good news.

Every gluten free baker should have a pantry with: buckwheat flour, oat flour, sorghum flour and arrowroot starch. Xanthan gum is a binder, and fro gluten free baking it’s a staple ingredient for your kitchen. Maple syrup is less processed than other sweeteners (and it's delicious). Look for reasonably priced maple syrup at Costco or Trader Joe’s. When it comes to coconut oil and baking, I recommend refined, organic coconut oil. Nutiva makes a great product. The label, 'refined' carries such negative connotations, as though it has been stripped of its healthy qualities. It's fat. It's saturated fat. Enuf said. 

Please buy whole nutmegs and a nutmeg grater. Fresh nutmeg is gorgeous. Try some on steamed or sautéed spinach; and mix some into ricotta (or Kite Hill vegan ricotta). I learned this from my mom. You need just a pinch. Buy fresh nutmegs from an amazing resource like World Spice Merchants or Penzey’s.  Both are great companies. Penzey’s supports teachers. I like people who like teachers.

I always recommend Baldwin’s vanilla extract. I’ve been recommending it to you for over ten years. I still recommend it. It’s good as gold.

Additions of nuts are up to you. If you don’t choose to add them, you can substitute gluten free chocolate chips. The bread isn’t cloying, so the addition of chocolate shouldn’t sugar shock you. I like walnuts with bananas, but I think pecans or hazelnuts would be excellent choices.

Fast away the old year passes. Out with those old bananas. Enjoy your days, one at a time, one breath at a time, a banana at a time.

Here's to a peaceful and healthy 2020. Let's hope that we find our way back to the garden, that we return to a country that is sane, that's led with intellect and that we return to democracy. 

Happy New Year!

love always.

always love.

jane

🍌 🍌 🍌 🍌 🍌

Banana Bread

Equipment: Electric hand or stand mixer, kitchen scale, bowls, measuring spoons, potato masher (for the bananas), loaf pans (standard size, or several smaller, or muffin tins).

Ingredients:

75 g. sorghum flour

75 g. oat flour

50 g. buckwheat flour

50 g. arrowroot flour

½ tsp./1g. xanthan gum

1tsp./6g. baking soda

½ tsp./2g. salt (I like kosher salt)

½ tsp. freshly grated nutmeg

2 eggs, size large, room temperature

80 grams refined coconut oil, melted (cooled to room temp.)

½ c. maple syrup (dark is best for baking)

1 tsp. pure vanilla extract

385 g. banana (approx. 3 large), mashed

66 grams chopped walnuts (or pecans or ‘other’ nuts)

       (Or, throw in equivalent GF chocolate chips)

Procedure:

Preheat oven to 350º F. and prepare loaf pan or pans with spray release or brush with melted coconut oil.

1. Set a large bowl on your kitchen scale and tare it to zero.

2. Measure dry ingredients (through the nutmeg on the ingredient list), taring after each addition. (Alternatively, if you feel you’ll have better control, you can measure each ingredient separately (use one smaller bowl, dumping the weighed ingredient into the large bowl each time.) Remember: tare, tare, tare.

3. When all dry ingredients have been measured, whisk together until completely combined.

4. In another large bowl (or in the bowl of an electric mixer), mix together: eggs, coconut oil (brought to a liquid state, but at room temperature) and maple syrup until well blended.

5. Add vanilla extract and blend.

6. Dump in the dry ingredients and mix, on low speed, until absorbed.

7. Add mashed bananas and mix until incorporated.

8. If adding nuts (or chocolate chips), dump them in and mix by hand. This will ensure that the batter is mixed throughout and ready for baking.

9. Fill prepared loaf pans (or muffin tins), filling them 2/3 of the way up.

10. Bake in the center of your oven, depending on size of product and your oven, anywhere from 15 minutes, up. The bread is done when you can put a toothpick in and it comes out clean. You’ll see the sides pulling away a little, too.

11. Remove from oven and as soon as you can, release from pans and cool on rack. When cool, serve or wrap well. These will keep for a day or two out of the fridge. After, refrigerate or freeze for up to a month.

Banappetite!

  

Best Banana Bread

Best Banana Bread

Adapted from Maida Heatter by Blue Heron Kitchen

This recipe, the best banana bread I’ve ever made or tasted is adapted from the great Maida Heatter. 

Let's go bananas!

I’m publishing this recipe by weight measurement. If you require volume measurements, send me an email at blueheronkitchen@gmail.com.

But...

If you haven’t bought a kitchen scale, here’s a link to an inexpensive one in the U.S. It’s about $23. American, and worth the investment. An electronic kitchen scale is invaluable essential to becoming a rock star baker. You'll achieve excellent and consistent results. (Check out Wirecutter (thewirecutter.com) for "the best" products. It's a great resource.)

Weighing ingredients allows you to play around! The original recipe called for all-purpose flour; and I replaced 100 grams (roughly a third) with whole wheat pastry flour. I love how the nuttiness of whole wheat complements bananas, don’t you? Fooling around with different flours is fun, but only if you’re throwing them on the scale. But beware: don’t think you have carte blanche with all flours. Different flours (even wheat) have different properties (gluten) and will alter your product. I find this very interesting, but I also have a pantry stocked with ground teff, buckwheat, millet and sorghum.

Most banana breads call for over-ripened bananas. For this recipe, some exterior black streaks and little black freckles are perfect. If your bananas are black, the sugar content will be quite high, cloying for this bread.

Truc: Don’t mash the bananas fine. Leave them slightly lumpy.

Truc: Toast your pecans first. Cool them completely and then toss them in a spoonful of the 

prepped dry mix (flour).

Truc: Toast a few more ounces of pecans than are called for in the recipe and keep them in a small glass jar. Throw them into a salad or into your yoghurt or into your cooked grains.

Eggs, size large, at room temperature. Buttermilk too, at room temperature.

Excellent quality ingredients will produce an excellent cake.

Be confident and have fun. You’re the boss top banana.

The People vs.. Fielding Mellish

(isn't this Epstein vs. Epstein?)

peace and love,

jane

Banana Bread

Ingredients:

6 oz./178 grams whole toasted and cooled pecans

10.8 oz./306 grams all-purpose flour

            (or, 206 g. all-purpose and 100 g. whole wheat pastry flour.)

1 tsp. baking soda

½ tsp. kosher salt

½ tsp. ground cinnamon

1 ½ - 1 ¾ c./350-400g. mashed (lumpy) very ripe bananas (about 3 large or 4 small)

4 oz./113 g. unsalted butter, room temperature (European style recommended)

1 tsp. pure vanilla extract (Baldwin’s recommended)

11 oz./312 g. granulated sugar

2 eggs, size large, room temperature

¼ c./59 ml. buttermilk

Procedure:

mis en place:

Measure buttermilk and butter.

Preheat oven to 350º F. /176º C.

Place medium bowl on scale and tare. Weigh pecans.

Place pecans on a small, rimmed jelly roll pan (cookie sheet) and toast in oven approx. 5-6 minutes, just until you can smell them. Take care to not burn them. If you do, start over. Remove nuts from oven and cool completely. When cooled, take about a Tbsp. of flour mixture and toss the pecans until they’re coated with the flour.

Bring all cold ingredients to room temperature.

Take out your vanilla.

Prepare a long tea loaf pan or a large, wider loaf pan, or two smaller loaf pans by buttering and flouring (or spraying with release) and flouring.

Place large bowl on scale and tare. Measure flour(s) and remove. Add other dry ingredients to flour: baking soda, salt, cinnamon and whisk together. Set aside.

Place medium bowl on scale and tare. Measure sugar and set aside.

making the bread:

Preheat oven to 375º F./190º C.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream together the butter and sugar.

Add eggs and continue to mix until creamy consistency. Scrape down sides of bowl, as required. (I use a silicone beater blade and this step is barely required.)

Add vanilla extract and buttermilk. (Mixture will look slightly curdled – this is okay!)

Add ½ flour mixture and mix until just incorporated. Scrape down, as required.

Dump in the mashed banana and mix until just incorporated. Scrape down, if necessary.

Add remaining flour and mix until just incorporated.

Remove the bowl from mixer stand and fold in pecans, making sure that all ingredients are incorporated.

Fill prepared loaf pan(s) and place in oven and bake for approximately 45 minutes to 1 hour (more or less, depending on your pan and your oven), until a wooden toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Cool in pans for about 10 minutes and then invert and stand the loaves up straight on a baking rack to cool completely.

This loaf will keep for several days, wrapped well, at room temperature, a week in the fridge, or you can freeze it. But it’s really best eaten the second day, after the flavors have had their chance to dance together.