Banana Bread

How about a loaf of healthy home-made bread with bananas? If you’ve had enough of traditional ready-made bread, then this recipe is just for you. And if you serve it with coconut paste and some fruit, yummy! A great idea for a sweet breakfast 🙂

Preparation

I blended the bananas with eggs, sugar and oil. Then I mixed in the dry ingredients, added the plant milk and combined everything. I transferred the mixture into a 24 cm long bread pan lined with baking paper. I baked the bread at 180°C for about 50 minutes and left it in the oven to cool.

How ripe the bananas should be

Spotted, soft, the ones you would not eat as they are. Ripeness is where the sweetness in this loaf comes from, which is why four tablespoons of coconut sugar are enough for a whole cake: with pale, firm bananas the same recipe tastes flat and no amount of extra sugar fixes the missing flavour. If yours are not there yet, twenty minutes in a 160 degree oven in their skins takes them most of the way.

Blend them properly with the eggs rather than mashing with a fork. Lumps of banana leave wet pockets in the crumb that look underbaked when you cut the loaf open, even when it is baked through.

Why this loaf needs a gentler hand than wheat bread

There is no gluten in oat, buckwheat or millet flour, so nothing here stretches. The cornflour and the eggs do the binding instead, and the structure they build is fragile while hot. That is the reason the recipe leaves the loaf in the oven to cool rather than turning it out: a gluten-free loaf taken out hot sinks in the middle as the steam leaves it.

For the same reason, stop mixing as soon as the batter comes together. Beating it does not develop anything, it only knocks the air out of the eggs, which are the only lift the loaf has apart from the baking powder.

Checking it, keeping it, changing it

Fifty minutes is a guide, not a rule, because tins differ. Test with a skewer in the middle: it should come out with a few moist crumbs, not wet batter. If the top is browning too fast, lay a sheet of baking paper over it for the last quarter of an hour.

The loaf keeps three days wrapped in a cloth and freezes well in slices, which is worth doing on the day you bake it rather than when it starts to dry. The raisins can become dried cranberries, chopped dates or a handful of walnuts, and the buckwheat flour can be all millet if you would rather have a milder taste.

If you would rather have breakfasts like this one planned into the week with a shopping list, that is what the Diet & Training by Ann app does.

Anna Lewandowska

Banana bread with oat and buckwheat flour

A gluten-free banana loaf: ripe bananas blended with eggs, coconut sugar and coconut oil, combined with oat and buckwheat flour and baked for about 50 minutes.

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Prep Time 15 minutes mins

Cook Time 50 minutes mins

Total Time 1 hour hr 5 minutes mins

Servings: 12 slices

Course: Breakfast

Cuisine: Polish

Calories: 240

Ingredients Method Notes

Ingredients

  

• 250 g desiccated coconut
• 4 bananas
• 4 eggs
• 150 g oat flour
• 150 g buckwheat or millet flour
• 2 tablespoons cornflour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 handfuls of raisins
• 4 tablespoons coconut sugar
• 150 ml plant-based milk
• 100 g coconut oil
• a pinch of cinnamon
• a pinch of sea salt

Method

 

1. Blend the ripe bananas with the eggs, coconut sugar and coconut oil until smooth.
   
2. Mix in the dry ingredients, then add the plant milk and combine everything, stopping as soon as the batter comes together.
   
3. Transfer the mixture into a 24 cm long bread pan lined with baking paper.
   
4. Bake at 180 C for about 50 minutes, testing with a skewer in the middle.
   
5. Leave the loaf in the oven to cool before turning it out.
   

Notes

Ingredient quantities are taken from the recipe box as published. Calories and the number of slices are approximate.

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