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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I’ve been on a banana bread kick lately and this recipe is perfect as is (and doubles well). I sometimes add 1/2 cup of chopped walnuts to the batter but the recipe is tasty as is. Another one out of the park (just in time for baseball season lol) Thanks Jenn!
What’s the purpose of the lemon juice? There’s no milk (for buttermilk) in the recipe.
Hi Regina, It doesn’t give the bread a lemony flavor; its acidity interacts with the baking soda, helping the bread rise. Hope that clarifies and that you enjoy if you make it!
Wonderful recipe, thank you for sharing it.
Hi Jenn, do you think the cinnamon/walnut/honey topping mixture you use for the muffins would work on this??
Thanks!!
Sure!
This was quick, easy and delicious! Looking forward to another slice tomorrow morning with coffee.
I made it again with 1/3 cup of chopped black walnuts folded in just before putting the dough in the pan. The taste test rating went up from a 5 star recipe to a 6 star recipe!
We made a non-dairy version and this is our new favorite banana bread recipe! We used one stick of Crock Plant Based Butter and did NOT add salt to the recipe b/c the butter substitute is salty already. For a fun variation we finished with a lemon glaze (powder sugar lemon juice and a couple drops of vanilla).
You know….it’s delicious and I love it, but it’s not pretty. Because I like to display my baked goods in a glass dome, I like them to be pretty. This loaf caves in or comes out flat every time. I even increased the baking powder by a little hoping it would help. I’ll still make it because it tastes good, but I’ll hide it because it’s ugly……lol. Anyone else having this issue?
No, mine domed nicely.
Same exact thing happend to me.
Hi Stephanie, you can try adding 1/4 cup more flour to achieve the dome. Keep in mind though that the cake won’t be quite as moist.
I substituted the 1/2 cup of butter with 1/4 cup olive oil, 1/4 cup Oikos Triple Zero Vanilla Greek Yogurt (which is sweetened with stevia), and 2 tbsp milk, and added 1 tbsp cinnamon and a lot of choc chips. Had to bake it about 10 min longer so top would harden a little. Texture and rise was great and fluffy and tasted great even without butter, although I’m sure with butter it would have been even better. I am also a lazy baker, so I blended all the wet ingredients first and added it to the mixed dry ones and the end result was fine despite that. Thank you so much for your excellent recipe that tolerated my substitutions and laziness very well. Everyone loved it.
This banana bread recipe is amazing! I used a beehive-mold cake pan so it was more like a banana cake, which reduced baking time to 25-30 minutes. I added cinnamon to the flour mixture, folded in chopped walnuts and dates, and spooned a cinnamon honey syrup on top of the finished cake. It was delicious and got rave reviews. Thank you so much!
I’ve tried at least 30 of the recipes and they are all hits and fantastic. Unfortunately this one fell short. I usually bake banana bread with almond flour and coconut oil but decided to indulge a bit with this recipe. I followed it to a tee and the ends were dry, overall the bread was a bit dry and lacking banana flavor. I’m sticking to my previous recipe now.