The {Great Banana Bread} Challenge

One trip to Costco. One three day weekend. Seven Banana Bread Recipes.  What could possibly go wrong?

In the early days of the pandemic everyone baked banana bread.  The natural response to a global pandemic is obviously banana bread. It's how we repurpose bananas too ripe to eat plain. As the lockdown progressed, the banana breads got more elaborate. I love that everyone rediscovered baking, but until very recently, I didn't bake a single banana bread because I was too busy stockpiling all purpose flour and paper towels.

This is the second installment to my insane weekend baking challenges. The first is the great chocolate chip cookie challenge. To celebrate  begrudgingly mark this one year anniversary of social distancing and working from home I baked 7 (seven!) different banana bread recipes.

Choosing the Recipes:  

Obviously, my first stop was my group text, per usual I got some great suggestions from my friends.  Then I asked my followers on Instagram. Like Chocolate Chip Cookies, everyone has a favorite recipe. When I started planning this challenge, I thought I would pick 12 recipes, just like last time, but very quickly realized I would be baking for the rest of my life. banana bread is quick to put together it is not quick to bake. The average baking time is about 1 hour.  So with that in mind, I picked 7.  Reasonable. (slightly less insane)

The Rules: (There are only 2 because we’re in a pandemic, okay?)

1.  Bake the recipe as directed.  This is always the hardest rule to follow, because I LOVE cinnamon in banana bread.  
2. The recipes couldn’t be ones that I’ve baked before.  My go-to banana bread is the Hot Bread Kitchen recipe, hands down without a second thought.

About The Leftovers:

In the middle of the pandemic where we’re working from home and I don't have access to 150 willing coworkers, I got a little creative.  In the end, I froze most of it and now we have a lifetime supply of banana bread. {I will write another post about this} 

Acknowledgements: 

Shout out to my friends  and my Instagram followers for so many great recommendations! To the cashier at Costco who looked at me like I’d lost my mind when I put 12 pounds of bananas on the check out belt. To my husband who meticulously provided feedback and quality control for all 7 banana breads. To my favorite 5 year old who provided no help what so ever.

The Reviews

Coffee Cake Banana Bread by A Latte Food

• Background:   My friend Jess sent me this recipe via group chat-- and several people on Instagram shared it as their go-to. 
• Thoughts on the Recipe:  This recipe is a cross between a coffee cake and banana bread.  While making this recipe, I loved that the author was basically like “y’all are going to season those bananas with cinnamon!”  I LOVE cinnamon in banana bread, so I was here for it. 
• Extra Ingredients: Crumb Topping. 
• The Pan: 8x4 inch. The recipe as written, yields 2 loaves, but it was really easy to only make half of the recipe. 
• Overall Taste: The banana bread itself was very moist and flavorful.  I found the crumb to be tasty but distracting. The bread itself was GREAT on it’s own. 

Flour Bakery’s Famous Banana Bread by  Joanne Chang

• Background:  I’ve seen this recipe EVERYWHERE and it’s always touted as the “Best” banana bread, so obviously I wanted to test it.  I am admittedly late to the Joanne Chang fan club, so  I need to catch up. 
• Thoughts on the Recipe:   This recipe requires a stand mixer with a whisk attachment.  Where most recipes start by creaming the fat (butter or oil) and the sugar together, this one starts by whisking the eggs and the sugar together.  I WAS so intrigued. 
• Extra Ingredients:  None
• The Pan:  1 9x5 inch pan
• Overall Taste:  When I had 7 banana breads laid out on the table  at one time, this bread got lost in the chaos of all of the fancy add-ons that every other bread had.  However, in the weeks since, this has become my go-to banana bread to grab out of the freezer, defrost in the microwave and eat with a cup of coffee. It’s a classic, understated banana bread.  Sophisticated, even.  Basically, you will feel like you run a bakery in your house, because that loaf is bakery quality. 

Black and White Banana Loaf by Dorie Greenspan

• Background:  My friend Zeynep sent me this recipe because it included rum.  She knows me so well. 🙂 
• Extra Ingredients: Dark Rum, Lemon Zest, Lemon Juice, Nutmeg, Chocolate
• Thoughts on the Recipe:  I had to zest a lemon and then squeeze the juice and then rummage through my spice cabinet for the nutmeg.  And since it’s a black and white loaf I also had to melt some chocolate for the chocolate half of the loaf.   If I was only making one banana bread-- these would be normal things to do, but in this case I had already made 4 banana breads and this one just felt unnecessarily extra. 
• The Pan: 1 8x4 inch loaf pan. 
• Overall Taste: No one is perfect and out of 7 loaves, this is the one that didn’t turn out for me.  The loaf was underdone even after leaving it in for an extra 10 minutes. I did taste the piece of the loaf for the flavors and the lemon was so distracting. I just don’t associate lemon with banana bread.  Unfortunately, because this loaf was not done properly, it met its demise in the bottom of the trash can, RIP. 

Double Chocolate Banana Bread, adapted from Cooking Pleasures, by Mel and Boys Kitchen

• Background:  My friend Cate sent me this recipe via group text and it is the only “chocolate is the main ingredient” loaf in the mix. 
• Extra Ingredients: Dutch Process Cocoa Powder, Chocolate Chips
• Thoughts on the Recipe:  This recipe came together so easily, nothing overly taxing. Out of all of the recipes this one got the most height. It's tall loaf.
• The Pan: 1 9x5 inch loaf pan
• Overall Taste: Have you ever had to go to a boring work training/conference {thing that lasts 3 days} and you’re staying in a hotel and it’s day 2 of the boring work training/conference and you stop at whatever catering table they have and pick up the chocolate muffin because you deserve it for putting up with this whole boring thing?  This is that muffin/loaf.  It will give you a sugar high you need to make it through to the next session.  *I didn't have to worry about saving this loaf because we ate it.  ALL OF IT*

Banana Bread, by Joanna Gaines, Magnolia Table Vol 1

• Background: I was on Instagram spreading the gospel of the Hot Bread Kitchen Banana Bread and my coworker Luis went out of his way to tell me that the Magnolia Bakery recipe is actually the best banana bread recipe ever.  That is probably the exact moment I decided to do this challenge all together. 
• Extra Ingredients: None. 
• Thoughts on the recipe:  If “Keep It Simple” was a recipe it would be this one. 
• The Pan: 1 8x8 square pan (aka the brownie pan).  I was so scared the bread was going to bake right over the pan, but because I followed my own rules for this challenge, I did it. And it wasn’t wrong. 
• Overall Taste:  This is where I admit my unconscious bias. The recipe only calls for like a 1 ½ teaspoon of vanilla extract and that is it.  Not a speck of cinnamon anywhere.  Imagine my complete and utter shock when this was as good as Luis promised.  It tasted like home. It is the banana bread that you make once a week and eat it for breakfast, lunch, snack, and dinner.  I continue to be gobsmacked by the simplicity -- imagine that-- banana bread that tastes like…. bananas. 

Twitter and Uncle Mike’s Banana Bread, by Chrissy Teigan

• Background: I was on Twitter that day that Chrissy Teigan needed extra bananas and people were volunteering to bring her their gently ripened bananas because the recipe calls for 6 bananas. 
• Extra Ingredients: Vanilla Jello Pudding and Coconut
• Thoughts on making the Recipe:   Chrissy’s recipe is one of the few that did not require a stand mixer.  The format is simple, whisk together the dry ingredients in one bowl, stir the wet together and then pour the dry ingredients into the wet.  Simple. 
• The Pan.  Chrissy is renegade here.  The banana bread cake is made in a bundt cake pan.  A+ for ingenuity. 
• Overall Taste: Let me say this now, I enjoy Chrissy Teigan -- I constantly misspell her name because the (i before e trick fails me here).  Two things about this banana bread a) it’s a cake instead of bread and b) the addition of coconut is the most controversial ingredient ever.  Either you love coconut or you don’t.   I love coconut so this is a win in my book. 

Island Banana Bread by Toni Tipton Martin, Jubilee

• Background:  I love the Jubilee Cookbook and I love Toni Tipton Martin, making this recipe was a no brainer. 
• Extra Ingredients: Medjool dates, cinnamon, nutmeg, all spice, molasses. First, I had to google “where are medjool dates in the grocery store?” because I had no idea how they are different from other dates.    (The answer is in the produce section). Second, my friend Zeynep and I went down the rabbit hole on how Medjool dates could even end up in this particular banana bread recipe.  After a ridiculous amount of research our best guess is that Ms. Martin being from cool and hip California just knew about them and realized that they add an incredible sweetness to the spiced banana bread. 
• The Pan: 1 9x5 inch loaf pan
• Thoughts on the recipe:  This recipe calls for toasted pecans which I substituted for dark chocolate chips because we have a nut allergy kid in our house.  Other than the substitution, making the bread was pretty straightforward
• Overall Taste.  AMAZING.  Oh my god. Moist -- the bananas and the dates add so much moisture to the loaf that it’s just incredible and the spices. The nutmeg in that was the real MVP.    

Summary

Are we doing March Madness this year? I can't keep up. At the end of 7 different banana breads, I had to put them in a bracket, which is below. Through this process I found that I am a bit of a banana bread purist. The banana breads that I liked the best added very few extras and if there were extras they exist to complement the banana, not compete. I don't feel as strongly about the crowning the "best" recipe because they each have their moment when that recipe is exactly what you want.