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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It would be nice to know how to prepare the loaf pans:-)
Butter and flour the loaf pan before adding the batter. 😊
Good morning,
In prepping for this recipe and at the same time reading through all the comments, I wonder if my kitchen scale is on the blink. (I did replace the battery.) I come up with less than one-half cup of mashed bananas when measured as 227 g. (The recipe calls for one cup of mashed bananas, which seems more like a good proportion of banana to flour, better than my less-than-one-half cup.) I am choosing your banana bread recipe this morning because I have butter and lemons at home but no yogurt/milk/buttermilk. Thank you for any suggestions.
(P.S. I’ll go out on a limb here and give the recipe five stars prior to trying it because I think that your responses to people’s questions and your willingness to highlight “repeat” recipes does a great service for new cooks.)
Hi Ellen, that’s strange – I’d go with as many mashed bananas as it takes to fill one cup. I realize I may be weighing in too late to help; if so, I hope it came out well!
Thank you for the reply. I did keep adding mashed bananas and also used four small tins instead of one. We enjoyed some of the bread, gave a loaf to the electricians in for some work, and froze the remaining loaf; it’s always nice to have banana bread on hand!-
Thank you for this awesome recipe. The moment I was done baking, the quicker it was gobbled up.
Rich, moist and crusty on top.
WOWZA!! and no oil…Exceptional, truly
Hi,
I followed your directions. When I took it out of the oven after 42 minutes and tried after 10 minutes to turn it upside down the cake burst and the banana filling came out!
It is delicious however, but I can’t serve it. Where did I go wrong?
Oh my gosh – sounds like a mess! Glad it tasted good though. 😆
It sounds like it was very underbaked. Are you sure your loaf pan was 9 x 5 inches?
Just fabulous. 10/10. Thank you.
Absolutely love this recipe and the bread, and so does everyone else who has tried it when I’ve made some!!
I was wondering if you had a vegan version of the recipe, or if you could possibly please tell me how I can make it vegan-friendly.
You see one of my really good friends got engaged yesterday, and I was like omg can I make you two something and the first thing she said was banana bread. The thing is she’s severely allergic to egg and dairy, and can’t have anything that has a trace of them, or she’ll go into shock and have to use her EpiPen or go to the hospital.
I know she really likes the allergy-friendly brand Enjoy Life. Are there any other brands you would recommend using? Or techniques I should do?
Any and all information/tips are much appreciated! Thank You!!
Hi Cassandra, congrats to your friend! Some readers have written in with tweaks they’ve used to make the banana bread vegan including replacing the butter with vegan margarine or coconut oil and the eggs with flax eggs or a store-bought egg substitute. Hope that helps!
I’m a long term fan of your recipes and have made many with great success however, this did not come out well for me. I’m 85 and obviously have been baking for many years, but for some reason this came out flat. I’ve never had a banana bread turn out like this before. Can you tell me what happened and what I might have done wrong?
Hi Shelagh, I’m sorry you had a problem with this! Is your baking powder or baking soda very old or expired? If not, did you make any adjustments to the recipe?
Amazing recipe!!! Thank you for sharing.
We all loved it!! Would definitely make again.