Buttermilk Banana Bread
When Bruce made butter the other day (you can find it here), I said he was left with some milky liquid in the bowl after the fat had globbed together into yellow bliss. That liquid, of course, was buttermilk. No, not the cultured stuff from the grocery store. Instead, this was old-fashioned buttermilk, the liquid remnants of butter making, only slightly sour and very flavorful. You can see it in that jar to the side of the other ingredients on the counter.
As you may know, we created this blog to preach our passion: real food, nothing fake, no hyped-but-faux ingredients. We've slowly been building a storehouse of recipes that don't use any processed fare.
This buttermilk certainly fits the bill. It's part of a new baking strategy around our house: only raw sugar like turbinado or muscavado, better flavor and better heft in batters; flavorful fats like avocado oil and walnut oil that beat those processed, tasteless oils hands down; and dedicated, delicious treats, made without anything fake in the mix.
Could you use regular, cultured buttermilk, the kind most often found at the store? Of course! Is it real food? Yes with a caveat. It is a bit of a fake-out, but not a chemical one; so we're OK listing it among the real food ingredients on this blog. But that said, use the low-fat version. It'll have more of the texture and taste of the homemade, old-fashioned stuff. Let's get cooking!
First, position the rack in the center of the oven and preheat that oven to 350F.
Next, whisk 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour, 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon baking soda, and 1/2 teaspoon salt in a small bowl.
Then beat 2 large eggs and 3/4 cup raw, unrefined sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer at medium speed until light and fluffy. Beat in 3 medium bananas, very ripe, peeled, and smooshed up into little bits. (You can see how black one of the bananas was in the first picture.)
Beat in 1/3 cup buttermilk, 1/4 cup toasted walnut oil, and 1 tablespoon vanilla extract. Then remove the beaters and stir in the flour mixture just until there are no undissolved pockets of flour in the batter.
Dab a little of that walnut oil onto a wadded-up paper towel and grease either two 1-quart loaf pans (which Bruce did) or one 9 x 5-inch loaf pan. Pour the batter into the pan. Rap the pan(s) a couple times against the counter, just to get any air bubbles out of the mix.
Bake until firm and puffed but not too brown, until a toothpick inserted into the loaf comes out with no crumbs attached, about 30 minutes for the smaller pans or 50 minutes for the larger one. Cool in the pan on a wire rack for 5 minutes, then turn the loaves out onto the rack and continue cooling to room temperature, about 1 hour. Wrap them in plastic wrap and store for 3 days at room temperature or for up to 3 months in the freezer.
banana, bread, buttermilk, snack 
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Reader Comments (4)
I wish I could get down to Mohegan Sun and see you guys perform songs from Cabaret (unless perhaps I read the link in too much haste).
Jim
Ah, well, check out that link to the side that shows our visit to A View From The Bay in May. I'd say that's pretty quintessentially Bruce and Mark.
it is in the oven. had to use store-bought buttermilk but it is low fat, organic. love the idea of using walnut oil -- which i remembered that i had on hand. i added a small handful of chopped walnuts for good measure.
Pat: Let me know how it turned out. Bruce made two loaves last week (from the store-bought stuff as well) and I froze one--so had some slices from it this morning for breakfast.