Sourdough Banana Bread Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret to good sourdough bread? ›

If you have too much starter compared to the additional flour and water you're adding, your hungry starter consumes all the nutrients and then it's not as bubbly.

Using too many eggs

The result could be a banana bread that is dense, spongy, and rubbery. Given that this baked treat is already a hefty product, you will want to avoid these unappetizing textures. According to The Cake Blog, over doing it on the egg addition can also affect flavor.

If you're set on a specific recipe that calls for the standard two or three mashed bananas, you can replace one or two of them with applesauce (½ cup equals 1 banana).

Whole wheat flour is an excellent choice for creating a sourdough starter due to its nutrient-rich composition and potential for fostering a robust microbial community. However, it's important to note that the quality of whole wheat flour can vary between brands.

There are two main acids produced in a sourdough culture: lactic acid and acetic acid. Acetic acid, or vinegar, is the acid that gives sourdough much of its tang. Giving acetic acid-producing organisms optimal conditions to thrive and multiply will produce a more tangy finished product.

If it gets contaminated with mold… thats the only way really for it to go bad. Sourdough starters are very resilient, and if left alone, they can go dormant, and will smell strongly of vinegar, and even almost acetone.

It would be best if you discarded some portion of your starter each time you feed it unless you want to continue to let it grow. Eventually, you need to discard the used “food” (flour and water) that's been used to sustain your starter during the last fermentation period.

If you don't get rid of the excess, eventually you'll have more starter than your feedings can sustain. After a few days, your daily 1/4 cup flour and water won't be enough to sustain your entire jar of starter, and your starter will be slow and sluggish, not much better than discard itself.

If you leave out the salt, your banana bread will taste very flat and you probably won't like it. In a quick bread the salt is there to enhance the flavour.

How many bananas replace one egg in baking? ›

Banana. Use ripe bananas to add moisture. One mashed banana can replace one egg in cakes and pancakes. Since it will add a bit of flavor, make sure that it's compatible with the other ingredients of the recipe.

Let the bananas ripen (and overripen) at room temperature. Depending on the weather, this could take a few days, or up to a week. The best bananas for banana bread aren't yellow; they're black. Or they're at least streaked with black/brown, with just the barest hint of green at the stem.

Fight the urge to use more banana than called for in your recipe. Using too much banana could make your bread heavy and damp in the center, causing it to appear undercooked and unappealing. If you have bananas leftover, you can always freeze them for later use.

An overmixed banana bread batter will result in a dense, rubbery loaf. As you're prepping your batter, heed the advice of "stir until just moistened" and "no more than 10 seconds."

So don't leave your dough in a warm oven, on a radiator or in sunlight. It will likely be too warm and will dry out your dough too. Instead, find a cosy spot, with no drafts, for your dough to rise. And, if your sourdough starter is struggling to get going, consider finding it a warmer spot too.

Honey: Honey adds a sweetness to this dough and helps balance any sour flavor that comes through from the fermentation process. If you are looking for whole wheat bread without the honey, try this recipe. Salt: Salt enhances the flavor and helps tempers the fermentation.

In my experience, the shortest final proof (at room temperature) that I prefer to do is one hour. The longest final proof (at room temperature) is about 3 hours. When going past 2-3 hours in a final proof, the crumb tends to get very gassy and opens up large gas bubbles with a longer countertop proof.