Take Your Banana Bread Up A Notch With One Ingredient

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Banana bread is already kind of the perfect baked good, sitting somewhere between bread and a cake, sweet without being dessert-level sugary, and, of course, a great way to use up overripe bananas. But if you've already been baking a loaf of this majestic bread for sometime and are looking for a way to make your recipe a little better, there's one ingredient worth adding to your rotation –- hojicha.

Hojicha is a Japanese green tea, and if you haven't heard of it, it's time to change that. Hojicha is a tea that is roasted over charcoal, so it has a wonderful nutty and toasty flavor, with notes of cacoa and caramel, that works so well in a bake. Hojicha may sound similar to matcha but it isn't. Matcha has a reputation for being quite grassy, bitter, and intense, which can actually overpower baked goods if not properly managed. In comparison, hojicha is much more mellow. It adds a complexity to banana bread without turning it into a fully "green tea-flavored" loaf.

​​Simply speaking, any good banana bread worth its salt needs to be sweet and fruity. When added to the mix, hoijcha won't overpower any of these qualities, but instead its toasted complexity will add a new dimension to the sugary notes already there from the ripe bananas. It will make the whole loaf taste richer and nuttier without actually having to add in any more fat or sugar, which is always a plus.

The easiest way to use it in your own home baking is to add hojicha directly into your batter. You can buy hojicha in a dry powdered form from Asian supermarkets or even buy a bag like the one by Jade Leaf. Once you have your hojicha, you'll only need to add 1 tablespoon per loaf into the batter with the rest of the dry ingredients. 

The only risk here is dryness, as green teas like hojicha can absorb liquid, so to combat it simply increase a liquid or moisture element, such as milk or mashed banana, in your batter. If you can't find dry powder but you can find tea leaves, you can steep loose-leaf hojicha in warm milk and then use that infused liquid in your recipe instead. Obviously, just make sure you allow the tea to fully cool down before adding it to your batter or you'll end up with green tea scrambled eggs instead. Hojicha is certainly a unique addition and one worth trying to turn any classic ultra-moist banana bread into something even more complex.