Ultra-Moist Banana Bread Starts With One Obvious Ingredient

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Making a moist, sweet treat can be accomplished using easy-to-find ingredients that are very budget-friendly, and it doesn't need to be complicated. Take banana bread, in which the main ingredient, bananas, is blended with a few others that you probably already have in your kitchen: sugar, flour, eggs, baking soda, and perhaps spices or nuts. Jerrelle Guy, author of the James Beard award-nominated cookbook "Black Girl Baking" and creator of The Dinner Ritual, a newsletter exploring the intersection of cooking and spirituality, spoke exclusively with Chowhound to share tricks for making the best ultra-moist banana bread.

The first tip involves the condition of the bananas. "First, the most important thing is to make sure you're starting with soft, mushy, spotty bananas — the overripe ones are best. Not only do they taste better, they contain more moisture," Guy says. (Similarly, brown sugar, she adds, also has a better flavor and higher moisture content than regular granulated sugar, so she swaps it in for banana bread.) Since you might not eat bananas in this condition, making banana bread can help you reduce food waste.

There's a science behind why overripe bananas taste better in banana bread. One reason is that the starches that make the banana firm turn to sugar, which makes the banana sweeter. This process also increases the banana's moisture. 

Using overripe bananas is just one of the key tips to making banana bread the right way, and is of stellar importance to a good-quality loaf. However, Jerrelle Guy has another technique that will enhance the moisture level even more while also creating a uniform texture. "I also like to purée my bananas in the blender, which gives the crumb a consistent moistness from edge to center," she says. Another helpful tip is to be careful when you combine the bread batter with the dry ingredients. "Make sure you weigh your flour so you don't add too much, and then gently fold it into the batter so you don't overmix it and develop the flour's gluten," Guy cautions. Flour contains protein, which turns into gluten when it is mixed with liquids that contain water. Developing the gluten will create protein strands, making your bread chewier and tougher, so by not overmixing the batter, you avoid these issues.

To guarantee a moist loaf, Guy suggests mixing in additional ingredients. "You can do little things like swap some of the butter with oil — this makes it extra moist and keeps it moist even a few days after it's been baked — or add things like yogurt, sour cream, or pumpkin puree," she advises. Then, for extra mouthfeel, "add in toasted coconut, chopped walnuts, or small pieces of dried fruit."  

If you have too many overripe bananas for your recipe, you're still in luck. Don't hesitate to freeze them, as frozen bananas make excellent banana bread. This will help you cut down on kitchen waste even more, and will provide bananas in the perfect condition to make this wonderfully moist and sweet quick bread.