Banana Bread is perfect for isolation-induced procrastibaking
Adapted from the Fannie Farmer Baking Book’s Kona Inn Banana Bread
Confession: I am on week six of working from home, and I cannot stop baking bread. After every email I write, I think, should I try a brioche or sourdough loaf? After every conference call, I wonder, is no-knead cinnamon raisin really possible? Spoiler alert: it is.
Baking bread isn’t just a way to pass the time. For me, it’s also a way to escape stress, anxiety, and, well, real world responsibilities. The New York Times put it best: “Procrastibaking is the practice of baking something completely unnecessary with the intention of avoiding real work.”
So, whether it’s a blizzard, self-quarantine, or a long stint stuck inside, I’m inclined to channel my energy into baking. The latest product of my procrastibaking is banana bread. And it’s the perfect isolation loaf.
Banana bread is comfort food at its finest--sweet, yet not overwhelmingly so. It can be served as part of breakfast, dessert with some vanilla ice cream, or as a plain hunk shoveled down ungracefully at 3 p.m. to get you through the afternoon workday slump (so very, very guilty of this). I’m truly shocked no company has made a “freshly baked banana bread” scented candle.
The key to a good banana bread is using ripe bananas - I keep mine on my counter and watch as they go from green, to yellow, to freckled, to almost completely brown. The riper they are, the sweeter the banana is. The natural sugars also mean you don’t have to put quite as much sweet stuff as you would in other desserts (side note: I’ve recently discovered that going to the dentist, even with health insurance, is quite expensive, so I’m doing my best to avoid getting a cavity).
With that in mind, it’s also worth mentioning that I don’t trust any banana bread that doesn’t have chocolate chips in it. It keeps the bread moist while adding just the right amount of star quality. You can omit them for this recipe, but you’ll be missing out if you do.
My younger brother said to me, “bananas are not meant to be put in anything but a smoothie.”
He’s wrong, and this recipe proves why.
Ingredients:
2 ¼ cups whole wheat flour – if you don’t have whole wheat flour, you can use white flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 cup unsalted butter
¾ cups sugar
2 cups mashed, ripe banana - for those of us, like myself, who struggle with math, that’s about six medium-sized bananas
4 eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup chopped nuts - I like using walnuts here
1 cup dark chocolate chips
Directions
Heat oven to 350 degrees. In a small bowl, stir together flour, salt, and baking soda. In a large mixing bowl, with an electric mixer, blend together bananas, eggs, walnuts, chocolate chips, shortening, and sugar. Add the dry ingredients and mix until well blended. Pour the batter into a greased and floured loaf pan and bake for an hour and 10 minutes or until well done. If the edges look crispy, cover with foil until the inside is cooked through. Let it cool and transfer to a rack.