The Ingredient Hack For Soft And Moist Banana Bread Is Too Easy
If you want to know the secret to seriously scrumptious banana bread, please know that the next few minutes of your life will involve reading the word moist, more than once. Because that's what good banana bread is — moist. And if you can't stomach the word, perhaps find someone to read this to you aloud, while substituting the word with something else.
Making very moist banana bread doesn't have to include a bunch of ingredients. You can take a standard, easy banana bread recipe and upgrade it without adding sour cream, yogurt, applesauce, mayo, or anything else — because if you treat them right, the bananas alone can do all the work. The secret is your freezer.
The trick is freezing, and then thawing the bananas for your banana bread recipe. When freezing a banana you're essentially freezing the water content into crystals. Thawing frozen bananas releases their natural moisture as the frozen crystals turn back into water. So thaw those frozen bananas in a microwave-safe bowl, then mash them up with the liquid that's been released. The result? Super moist, banana goodness.
The science behind this banana bread hack
There are a few things that you need to know about how fruit freezes. The first is that when moisture turns into ice, it expands. This means that as ice crystals form, they rupture the fruit. The larger the crystals, the worse off the fruit. But the faster you can freeze a fruit, the smaller the ice crystals, and the better the quality when thawed. This is why you see flash-frozen fruit at the grocery store. The part we want to exploit for this banana bread trick is to form large, destructive ice crystals.
By using a home freezer, your bananas will freeze slowly and essentially deteriorate. Once they are fully frozen, thaw them quickly — preferably in the microwave. Your bananas will be juicy and ready to be mashed right away. Mashing the banana at this point helps release more banana flavor and moisture than you'd get normally.
The result is super moist banana bread without sacrificing any flavor — not like garnering moisture from milk, sour cream, or mayo, which will increase moistness but dull the flavor.
Take care with your ingredients
It's important to use ripe or overripe bananas for this trick of freezing and thawing to achieve moist banana bread. That's because they have far less starch and considerably more sugar than green or under-ripe bananas. Excess starch in the banana will affect the flavor and texture of your bread in an undesirable way, making it tougher and less sweet — so always use ripe or overripe bananas.
Your go-to banana bread recipe may say to only use very overripe bananas, which are structurally degraded from ripe bananas already. While this is a frugal way to save bananas from the garbage bin to use later in a recipe, this particular freezing hack helps to close the texture gap without waiting for your bananas to fully brown and liquify on their own.
Note that the batter may be wetter than you're used to, as you've released more moisture from the bananas than normal. Resist the temptation to add more flour, as this can make the loaf tough and dry. Additionally, remember that a wetter batter may lengthen the baking time from what you're used to. Otherwise, this hack for softer, moister banana bread is as easy as it comes.