Sourdough Banana Bread
There’s something homey about banana bread. It gives warm-cinnamony-sit-in-a-corner-with-a-book-and-cup-of-coffee vibes. Plus it’s one of the easiest things to make!
While I’ve been using whole wheat flour for my banana bread for a while, today I give you not only a whole wheat recipe, but sourdough too! I’ve been keeping my sourdough starter for about 3 months now, and I always try to use the discard for something so it doesn’t go to waste. This week: Sourdough Banana Bread.
All things considered, this is a pretty healthy recipe. It calls for whole wheat flour as I mentioned, but I also cut the sugar in half. The original recipe I found for this has ½ cup of brown sugar and ½ cup of granulated sugar. That’s a whole cup! Why would I need that much sugar in there?! It just seems like a lot to me, so I used a quarter cup of each instead. You get sweetness from the bananas, and if you choose to add chocolate chips (because why would you not), you get plenty of sweetness from those too. Using the sourdough also makes the top of the bread a bit crispier, so don’t be alarmed if it looks slightly different than your regular banana bread loaf.
I hope you enjoy this twist on a classic comfort treat!
-S
Ingredients:
1 ½ cups mashed bananas
½ cup (ish) neutral oil
½ cup Sourdough discard
¼ cup brown sugar
¼ cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 ¾ cups whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
¾ tsp salt
½ tsp cinnamon, or to your preference
**Optional**
Dark chocolate chips
Method:
Preheat oven to 350° and grease a 9x5 loaf pan with cooking spray and set it aside.
In a large bowl, whisk together the bananas, sourdough starter if using, oil, sugar, eggs, and vanilla until well-combined.
Add flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon and mix with rubber spatula until just combined. If using dark chocolate chips, add these now and mix until they are evenly distributed.
Pour the batter into the pan and bake for 50-60 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean. Allow to cool in the pan for 10-15 minutes before turning it out onto a wire rack to finish cooling.