Roasted Banana Bread

This is the perfect banana bread: moist, sweet, and very easy to make. The recipe is for a plain loaf, but you can add chips or nuts. Roasting bananas makes them sweeter and ready to use, so you don't have to wait for bananas to ripen, you can make this quick bread even if you only have green fruit! It keeps well and can be frozen.

I love finding overripe bananas in the market. They're usually cast aside to a corner, already bagged and weighed so people don't have to go through the messy business of touching them. Just grab them. Then go home and bake your absolute-best-ever banana bread. Either that or you find blackened bananas in your fridge or wherever it is that you keep them. Again.

But, what if I want to make banana bread right now and they are all bright yellow and firm, even a bit green? Am I supposed to wait an entire week before I bake? I might not feel like it by then. Yes, life is tough.

In comes this recipe with the simplest trick to help banana bread lovers everywhere. By roasting bananas in the oven, you soften them and they concentrate the flavor so they're ready to be used.

Ingredients

This is an old-fashioned banana bread recipe that uses everyday ingredients.

• Bananas: use overripe or roasted bananas, they both work of course.
• Oil: I like to use sunflower, but I've made it with olive oil with great results.
• Sugar: I love using both white and brown sugar, similar to what we use in chocolate chip cookies.
• Eggs: fresh are always recommended.
• Flour: all purpose flour always works, and I've also made it with cake flour with great results.
• Salt: it brings out the flavors. I like kosher salt.
• Baking powder and baking soda: these are the leavening agents in the bread that will make it rise beautifully when it bakes.
• Lemon juice: just a tiny bit to tenderize the crumb and help the baking soda (it needs acid to balance it).

Best bananas for baking

We all know that the best banana for this type of recipe is one that is overripe, soft, mushy, that smells barely fermented with spotted skin.

You probably wouldn't eat it raw, but it does make the best bread. Why? Because the flesh is sweeter and the banana flavor of the bread is more intense. That doesn't happen with very firm bananas.

Enter this recipe for roasted banana bread. Where you roast your underripe bananas and half an hour later have soft, sweet bananas for your bread.

How to roast the bananas

• Whole: simply bake them in a medium oven (350°F/180°C) whole, unpeeled. After a half hour or so, they will turn completely dark, almost black. Not nice people, on that we can all agree (image below). But it's just the skin that is blackened. Inside it's soft and caramelized. You will understand the second you peel the banana how this changes everything.
• Without skin: you can also peel them, sprinkle with some sugar (optional) and bake in a aluminum pouch (a large piece of foil where you place the fruit and then close by lifting the edges and closing them together at the top) until soft and juicy.

Easy steps

• The eggs are beaten with the sugar until thick, about 1 minute and then the oil is added in a stream. The batter will be silky and unctuous. Add the mashed bananas, vanilla and the buttermilk (or use 2 teaspoon milk and 1 teaspoon lemon juice).
• I like some banana chunks to show, I feel it gives the bread a good texture.

• Sift the dry ingredients beforehand or have them measured and sift them directly over the batter (I do it this way). At this point I like to use a spatula to integrate well. If you use the hand beater make sure you beat at low speed just until combined.

• A tablespoon of sugar is sprinkled just before baking and it makes a wonderfully crunchy topping! You can also top with a raw banana, like we do in the chocolate chip banana bread recipe.

Top tips

• Organization: always read the recipe first and make sure you have all the ingredients, at the right temperatures, and also the rest of the equipment and space to make it. This will make the process so much easier!
• Baking time: keep in mind that all ovens and pans are different, even if they look the same or very similar. The baking time in my recipes is as accurate as it can be, but it might take you more or less time. You can use a thermometer that is placed inside the oven (like the OXO oven thermometer) to check that your oven is at the right temperature. I recommend you keep track of how your oven works and what tiny details you might need to adjust. 
• Bananas: roasting them means you can use very firm or even greenish bananas and the flavor will be amazing. Besides roasting them whole in the oven, you can also peel them, sprinkle with some sugar and bake in a aluminum pouch until soft and juicy.
• Oil: you can use any vegetable oil. I use sunflower or coconut but I've used canola, and even olive oil.
• Keeping: as with most banana bread recipes, it tastes much better a day (or two) after it's baked. It freezes well, well wrapped. Defrost at room temperature, unwrapped. I recommend warming it or toasting it before eating.
• Add-ons: chocolate chips, walnuts, pecans, white chocolate chips... a half cup of any or a mix of these and you have a fabulous flavored roasted banana bread.
• Butter: use butter instead of oil. The same volume, that is half a cup or 115g. Cream the soft butter with the sugars for 2-3 minutes, add the eggs one at a time, then the banana with the buttermilk and vanilla, and finally the sifted dry ingredients.

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Adapted from Better Homes and Gardens Complete Book of Baking