Carla Makes Banana Bread | From the Test Kitchen | Bon Appétit

action okay sorry I lost my train of thought

banana

s okay guys this BS is not only the best

banana

bread

but it's one of the best I've made the most times. I've made this recipe for this banana

bread

, tens of hundreds, let's say hundreds. Many times it always turns out perfect, it always

makes

me very happy. Although I've never done it here in Test Kitchen, so everything will be different. The first time you make banana bread is when you have bananas that look like this and then the people you live with say it would be disgusting why do they have brain spots on all my bananas?

They're actually very sweet when they get to this stage, the starches change and no, they become more like a pudding like that. really the first thing that is the first step is like if you want overripe bananas, if they are not overripe, your banana bread will lack moisture, it will also lack sweetness, it will lack banana nests and the point is that bananas are fine, it next before starting. mixing because everything goes quite quickly prepare the pan. I have to say that medal is a great option because it conducts heat even better than glass, so I think we'll get a beautiful browning on the banana bread and that's a lot of bees. so before I put the dough in my burnished metal banana bread pan, okay, a light layer, lightly cover my arm and lightly cover the floor, so the recipe says to put the parchment paper on it which we obviously ripped to make it fit with a long overhang or a generous overhang.

The long sides, which are these sides here and which are used to make a banana hammock, are different. I know that has another meaning, but then we'll make a banana bread hammock with our lifters. What is that university when they have to take you off the field? and they come and put you on a stretcher a stretcher is like a stretcher or a banana bread stretcher or a banana hammock yes, plenty of edge for my banana bread but yes, this will help with the lifting that has to happen later I'm sorry, I go back on something else.

What you need to do before you do anything is get some butter out of the refrigerator because you need to soften it. The reason for softening the butter is so that it is creamed with the sugar in the correct way, so that the sugar and butter together form a With all the cutting motion, the butter is cut with the small sugar blades and that in It actually incorporates a lot of air into the butter, so when you press on the butter, your finger should leave an impression and it pulls back and I'm getting a little peak, which is we're right on the edge, so if you push in and your finger leaves an impression that stays there but doesn't like to squish everything, you've softened the butter.

Have I done this with half of everything? purpose, half whole wheat, yes I have done that, you can do that, you won't get the same rise, a little kosher salt and baking soda, okay, whisk together all purpose flour, salt, baking soda for the acid and that It is simply reserved for the butter to soften. 1/2 stick dark brown sugar. I have used my jaggery at home in a pinch. Yes, I have what you're missing is a little bit of that darker molasses richness from dark brown sugar. Totally fine, we are using plain yogurt. You can use marscapone, which is how the recipe is written, you can make sour cream, they are all good.

I'm going to vigorously cream this butter and sugar and as I said before, the little sugar crystals are whipped up through this whipping action. That's why the recipe says to do this for four minutes, which seems like an incredible amount of time; It's actually the perfect amount of time to mash bananas, so don't worry, set a timer because people don't believe it's four minutes. It's real, but this is a very important part of achieving the good rise of banana bread, so the times I made it at home I didn't get much of a rise, two reasons why the baking soda could have been too old or I was a little impatient with the spanking, which is what happens.

I am very excited. I don't know if there is a tattoo crusher at home. I only have forks so I am very excited about this tool which is the perfect tool. What happens when you mash bananas is they go from using matte to using that word again, but it's not like bananas or juicy, but when you mash them well enough they become very shiny and they soften and you want to get to that point, you don't have to. So when we work on developing the best banana bread, we first start with what we always start with the a is quick, which is what is the recipe? that we have to make what is banana bread and then everyone says what banana bread is a shame.

Banana bread for me was a recipe from the Fanny Farms baking book that my mother made all my life while she was growing up, it wasn't like that. It had nuts in it and it didn't have raisins or frosting or anything like that, it was just very tall and very moist and very delicious Moist is a word that a lot of people have trouble with, but it's a word that applies to most banana bread, wait , I want to scrape the sides because I feel like we're getting about 30 seconds in, yeah, it's very airy, you can see it changed color a lot and it also gains volume. that's how you know there's air in there, that's what that space is okay, this looks really beautiful, nice, light and creamy, there's a little bit, you can see, there's a little bit of granulation, don't worry, two big eggs they will go one at a time true story second egg bingo bango wow it looks broken everything is going to be fine this happened to me many times so what is happening is it could be a small temperature change between the eggs a little colder than the butter mixture and I think it caused some of the fat to churn and we also added a lot of liquid, which does its thing in that mixture, but this is trust, trust that I've done.

This often happens the same thing and then everything is fine, yes you have to slow down unless you don't mind a ton of flour hitting your face. The other thing, I don't have one of those flours. it slides around, but this is also always a time where the roundness of the bowl and the roundness of this bowl with the thing and then I get a lot of flour on the surface of my counter. I'm going to try to bring it together in the middle and then I don't want to mix too much at this point because once you see now everything is a beautiful creamy emulsion, we made our dough and it looks amazing.

I don't want to overmix here because once the liquid and flour come together, you've created gluten and we. We don't want a hard banana bread, we want a deliciously soft bread, okay, and now for the bananas, so if you were making those extras, you would do them at the last stage. Walnuts, walnuts, banana, peanuts. I mean, why not? Okay, this is visible. Since writing my book I've been thinking about this a lot, basically everything I know about cooking I learned from someone else and then even things you think you came up with on your own and then tell someone. about it and they say, oh yeah, I do that, so I'm not surprised, obviously there's something going on here that I learned from someone.

I just wish I could remember who it was, so I can't give it credit. It was me. it was okay Brad taught me this and you can do this with any bread loaf, any kind of thing like that, it's just to give it a little bit of crunch like a little added crunch. I take raw sugar or you could even use granulated sugar and sprinkle it over the top of the cake and then when it bakes it will get a little bit of differential texture and it will look a little shiny and a little crunchy, sometimes I also add a little salt in scales.

If I'm feeling very daring, it's an adaptation from the original, but I really like what happens when it's baked well. If you don't, it's totally fine. It's going to be incredible. Right now it goes in the oven, which is I put it at a predetermined temperature that I matters 53 54 60 to 65 minutes I like to go sideways because I feel like the heat is more even and if you go the long way around, the oven is cooler in the front and hotter in the back. 60 to 65 minutes have passed, it's time to lift this banana bread out of this pan, it's time to air lift this banana bread out of the pan, but look how beautiful it is before you do it, all those little sparkles and the little crusty holes and then these cracks are normal so if you're a broken banana bread it's totally fine the reason it cracked is because it rose and then fell back down so as it rises it separates the dough and that creates a little seam and then when it falls back it falls back into place that's why it has a crack it's just part of the natural leavening and then we have our beautiful riser so if you don't have the parchment which talks about The experience sometimes happens while it's still hot, you just cut around the outside of the bread, let it cool, this stays in the pan for a whole hour and then you'll just invert it into your hand and then back onto the board, but we did it. we have parchment because we run the

test

kitchen

we have everything it looks really beautiful it's perfect the ribs are perfectly raised and it browns really well mine doesn't brown as much in the glass pan so keep in mind if so It's how that expression becomes metal. the pan will give you an even better sear, so in my house the first slice is, oh, it's a little slanted, you know, the first slice is all about tidying up the edge, aka Scooby Snack, which is for the cook , but it's really beautiful, it's very, it's a very tight crumb, you didn't see all those threads from the banana itself, that darker brown is the fiber of the banana, I guess, and then the top piece like a muffin top, I've never had a cold one because I always can't wait until it closes, so my first snap is usually hot, so yeah, don't cut the banana bread too thin because then it will wrinkle.

I like a nice thick slice of banana bread it's just perfect it's the perfect shape everything is perfect super moist every time click one of the things we had to fix when we were working on the banana bread recipe banana, you know, sometimes with some banana breads, long after you cook it it's kind of rubbery. underbaked like wet sand on the bottom, that's what it has to do with the moisture content, the yeast and the temperature in the pan and the oven, and we totally figured it out because there's none of that here and it's really uniform in Top to bottom, it's perfect. it's B, it's better, this is the only banana bread we have softened butter, also great with cream cheese and the next day, I highly recommend putting it in the toaster, as opposed to a low toast setting, heat it up, let it crisp up and then the butter will melt or your cream cheese will soften everything sweet should have something a little salty because life is not all sweetness you know what I mean Leoni, are you banana bread, banana lover?

I'm, you know, no, so this is a nice slice with butter and salt. but if you like Plain Jane I can mix it up for you we were talking there in Boise great flavor very banana which I like not too sweet well this is very good I'm going to pick it up too and this one though yeah and this one ruined me for all the others, it only has brown sugar, so it's not like crazy cake, but pieces of cake. I mean, I'm going to get right to the point with a pinch of salt. Do you know people I don't like bananas, are you familiar with this rap?

Oh he hates them, luckily she doesn't, he hates them and you know who else hates bananas. Martha Stewart Gaby, that was great, Gary, do you like bananas? Banana bread is one of my favorites. I like it, it's funny, you make the nut, yeah we were talking about it's optional sometimes, yeah, so what kind of nut, okay, make it interesting so you don't make the best banana in BAS, no, but I wanted to do it in oh yeah. You used to have bananas in the

kitchen

, but then I thought Gabi had banned them because they were so good mm-hmm yeah, do you ever freeze them?

It's good, isn't it? You use them frozen here, no. They were fresh, it's great if the ones you had were practically liquefied. People don't like bananas, although yes, people have very strong feelings against bananas, no, but Chris Rock was one of them, the man hates bananas, yes, and he once had to. like Nana's recipe, you know where you take the frozen banana and try to make ice cream with it, yeah, he almost went crazy, it was like the worst week of his life. I have what did you read before that happened? that with my Nana, yes, Brad, I like green or tomorrow with family or for experiences with the texture, I can eat them if they are green and I can eat them there, okay, we love bananas, yes, we are bananas for bananas, It's going well, ND, okay.

Cool hiding somewhere cool, thanks bananas for bananas, so you heard it here first folks, and if you've been making other banana breads, you've been doing it wrong, that's all there is to say, unless Tommy wants to say something.