Banana Bread
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This banana bread recipe bakes up light and tender, with rich banana flavor and a crisp, golden crust.
If you prefer your banana bread light and tender rather than heavy and dense, this banana bread recipe is for you. Creaming the butter and sugar gives the loaf an almost cake-like crumb, while very ripe bananas provide plenty of banana flavor and moisture. The outside bakes up beautifully golden with a crisp crust that’s especially good against the soft interior.
You can add walnuts or pecans or chocolate chips if you like—see the recipe card notes for the details. And if your bananas aren’t quite ripe enough, I’ve included an easy trick for getting them ready to bake with. If you have leftovers, try a slice lightly toasted; it’s one of my favorite ways to eat it, and it brings that crisp crust right back.
“I feel like I’ve tried every banana bread recipe on the internet and none even comes CLOSE to this one. Usually banana bread is too dense or too sweet for me, and this one is just right.”
What You’ll Need To Make Banana Bread
- All-purpose flour: Spoon it into the measuring cup and level it off rather than scooping directly from the bag; too much flour can make the bread dry and heavy.
- Baking soda and baking powder: Work together to give the banana bread plenty of lift and a light, tender crumb.
- Unsalted butter: Make sure it’s softened so it creams properly with the sugar, incorporating air into the batter and helping create that light texture.
- Very ripe bananas: Provide moisture, natural sweetness, and plenty of banana flavor—the riper, the better. Look for bananas that are heavily spotted or even fully brown. If yours aren’t quite ripe enough, bake them in their peels at 300°F for 15 to 20 minutes, until soft and blackened. Extra-ripe bananas also freeze well; see my post how to freeze bananas for baking for details on freezing and thawing.)
- Fresh lemon juice: Provides acidity to react with the baking soda and help the bread rise; you won’t taste lemon in the finished loaf.
- Vanilla extract: Rounds out and enhances the banana flavor.
- Jump to the printable recipe for precise measurements
How To Make Banana Bread
Mix the dry ingredients: Whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. This distributes the leaveners evenly, so the loaf rises uniformly.
Cream the butter and sugar: Beat the softened butter and sugar until noticeably lighter in color and fluffy. This step incorporates air into the batter and helps give the banana bread its light, tender crumb.
Add the eggs and bananas: Beat in the eggs, followed by the mashed bananas, lemon juice, and vanilla. The mixture may look a little curdled or separated at this point—don’t worry; that’s normal.
Finish the batter: Add the dry ingredients and mix just until no streaks of flour remain. Avoid overmixing, which can make the bread heavier and tougher. If you’re adding nuts or chocolate chips, gently fold them in now.
Bake: Scrape the batter into the prepared loaf pan and smooth the top. The bread is done when it’s nicely golden and a tester inserted into the center comes out clean. Let it cool briefly in the pan, then turn it out onto a rack to cool completely.
Variations
If you’re in the mood to mix it up, try marbled banana bread, chocolate banana bread, banana coconut bread, or chai-spiced banana bread.
Video Tutorial
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Banana Bread
Ingredients
- 1¾ cups all-purpose flour, spooned into measuring cup and leveled-off
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
- ¾ cup sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 1 cup mashed very ripe bananas, from 2 to 3 large bananas
- 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice, from 1 lemon
- 1½ teaspoons vanilla extract
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). Butter and flour a 9 x 5-inch (23 x 13-cm) metal loaf pan.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt.
- In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the mashed bananas, lemon juice and vanilla extract and mix well. It will look a little curdled at this point; that’s okay.
- Add the flour mixture and beat on low speed until just incorporated. Do not over mix. Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan and bake until a tester inserted into the center comes out clean, 40 to 45 minutes. Let cool in the pan for about 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.
Notes
Nutrition Information
This website is written and produced for informational purposes only. I am not a certified nutritionist and the nutritional data on this site has not been evaluated or approved by a nutritionist or the Food and Drug Administration. Nutritional information is offered as a courtesy and should not be construed as a guarantee. The data is calculated through an online nutritional calculator, Edamam.com. Although I do my best to provide accurate nutritional information, these figures should be considered estimates only. Varying factors such as product types or brands purchased, natural fluctuations in fresh produce, and the way ingredients are processed change the effective nutritional information in any given recipe. Furthermore, different online calculators provide different results depending on their own nutrition fact sources and algorithms. To obtain the most accurate nutritional information in a given recipe, you should calculate the nutritional information with the actual ingredients used in your recipe, using your preferred nutrition calculator.
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Hello Jenn, greetings from London! I have made this recipe many times recently and it has always been delicious! Passed on to family and friends. Puts a smile on everyone’s face in these difficult times. Many thanks!
good morning,
i have made your banana bread many times, and it always turns out well.
can i make them as muffins instead of a loaf?
Thank you
Wendy
Glad you like it! Yes, you can definitely make this into muffins if you’d like. 🙂
Wonderful recipe but mine caved in the middle :(….I’m wondering what I didi wrong. Do you have any idea why that happens?
Hi Juliana, Usually a quick bread will cave in the middle if it’s a bit underbaked. Next time I’d leave it the oven for a few more minutes.
Absolutely delicious! Light and not too sweet. Scattered walnuts on top. Thank you!
Oh wow…thats indeed an incredible recipe,thanks alot..Even with just half cup of sugar,it turned out perfectly sweet.
Hi Jenn! I made this last week and it was amazing! I want to make it again today and add walnuts. When would be the best time to add and about how much? Thank you!
Amy
Hi Amy, Glad you liked it! I’d recommend about 1/2 cup of chopped walnuts and you can combine them with the batter right before you pour it into the pan.
Jenn,
The first time I made this I was not impressed. In the interim, I tried another recipe from another site. Terrible. Since then I have come back to your recipe, and made it several times. Each time it was excellent, followed by “when are you going to make this again?”I have, it’s in the oven now. This has become my go to recipe. It’ll be made again, once I find some flour.
Thanks.
Thank you for this wonderful recipe – it was perfect. I am making this again, but want to add fresh blueberries to the batter. Would the recipe need to be altered in any way due to the added moisture?
Hi Karen, glad you liked it! It’s hard for me to say whether or not you need to make any alterations when adding berries without trying it myself. You may want to add a little bit more flour to soak up some of the additional moisture. Please LMK how it turns out if you try it!
Very good banana bread, probably the best I’ve made – I added toasted pecans. I have found that in England when a US recipe calls for all purpose flour, I’m better off using 00 flour rather than plain flour. Now all I need to do is find some 00 flour as everyone’s home baking and flour and yeast are very hard to find!
This recipe turned out so well! I made it with my 5yr old and it was easy to follow and make. Ate a piece while it was still warm..YUM. We added 1/2 cup chocolate chips. My one possible error was that I used the convection oven setting so it took 65 min, and I checked every 5min after 45min to make sure I didn’t overbake it.