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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Delicious! Very easy to follow recipe instructions. This is my third time making it and it comes out great every time!
This banana bread is amazing! I made this recipe vegan by replacing butter with vegan butter and the eggs with 2 flax eggs and it’s amazing! Even my non vegan family members loved it. We make a lot of banana bread and honestly I just find a new recipe each time but this is a keeper. Thanks for sharing!
poorly written recipe
tried this recipe once, it was great! just have one question: does the “1-3/4 cup of flour” refer to one AND three quarters or one TO three quarters? Same goes with the vanilla extract.
Hi, Glad you liked it! Those measurements refer to 1 cup plus 3/4 cup of flour (and the same format for the vanilla). For some reason, the back end of my system makes me include that hyphen. Sorry for any confusion!
That’s funny because I always have the same question. It is a bit confusing with the hyphen.
What an excellent recipe! I deviated slightly from the recipe in that I took Julia Childs advice and used jumbo eggs. Sugar reduced to 1/3 cup. I’m not a sweet fan, plenty of sugar in the bananas. Flour was spooned and leveled in measure, bananas were cooked for 8 min in a non-stick skillet to reduce the moisture, 3/4 cup pecan pieces added. Bread pulled at 200 deg F on an instant thermometer. P E R F E C T !
Yes, I gave this a shot. Tried to make banana bread about 20 years ago during the dot-com crash when I went from high-paid engineer to Mr. Mom. Not so good. Rephrase. Horrible. About a month ago, my wife and I tried another recipe. OK, but not great. Today, I tried yours. Far superior to my last efforts. Thank you, m’lady.
This really is the best banana bread EVER! I think I could eat the entire loaf myself. This is like my only banana bread recipe now
Excelent recipe!I have made it as is many times and it’s always eaten and enjoyed by all. I have a gluten free family member and have now made this recipe 3 times using Bob’s Red Mill 1:1 GF flour–each time a success! For the GF flour, I have found I need to increase baking time. Otherwise, I followed the recipe as is and it’s great.
I’ve also added chocolate chips to the recipe and that’s a kid favorite.
We love this recipe in our home. I’m wondering how I could convert it to a muffin or mini muffin recipe..?
Glad you like it, Beth! It should work nicely for muffins. I’d keep the oven temp the same and start checking them for doneness at about 18 minutes for standard muffins and about 12 minutes for minis. Hope that helps!
Can you make this with gluten-free flour, and if so what brand/kind do you recommend? Thank you!
Hi Martha, I haven’t made a gluten-free version of this but other readers have and have been happy with the results. Please let me know how it turns out if you make it!
Try Bob’s Red Mill 1-1 GF Flour Blend. Already has xanthan gum so don’t add any. I use this and King Arthur’s Measure for Measure GF blend (also has xanthan). Of the two, I lean more towards Bob’s, but do know that the KA blend is enriched. The only one that I know of in the market that has that. Tip: I always add a bit more leavener. If recipe calls for 1 tsp bkg pdr, I’ll add another 1/8th tsp. ALSO: Allow batter to sit in the prepared pans for about 5 mins or so. This allows flours to “hydrate” but do know that I use only double acting bkg pdr.
Good luck! And ENJOY!
FORGOT TO ADD: I replace 1/2 cup of the flour with Bob’s Superfine Almond Flour or the Unblanched Superfine Almond Flour. Of the two, I prefer the results with the unblanched (comes out a bit firmer, which I prefer). I use homemade brown sugar and reduce the amount called for to 2/3 c or use equivalent Truvia Brown Sugar Blend. I also play with the butter because that is just too much when you are watching calories. Recipe works well with replacing eggs with liquid eggs. Hey, when you have to watch A1C and cholesterol, you do what you gotta do so you can still enjoy a treat!
I’m not rating since I did not follow recipe as written.
I actually prefer Cup4Cup gf flour. I find I don’t need to make any adjustments to recipes, it’s really a terrific gf flour (better than Bob’s Redmill, as much as I love them).
I didn’t use Jenn’s actual recipe because I had a lot of bananas to use up and needed one that could absorb at least 4 but I did follow her instructions since all recipes pretty much start the same. The step-by-step photos are so helpful, thank you Jenn! I’m new to baking and had no idea what ‘cream until light and fluffy’ should look like until I read your post. I also panicked initially when adding the banana and it looked curdled, so also appreciate your extra note there. Thanks again!