My Favorite Banana Bread Recipe (2024)

My favorite banana bread recipe makes some of the best banana bread you’ll ever eat. It’s incredibly easy to make and bakes up soft and moist with an irresistible cinnamon sugar crust.

As a food blogger, I get asked for recipe suggestions all the time, and I’m usually thrilled to oblige (it’d be silly to run a food blog if I weren’t). But there’s one recipe people ask me about the most that I just didn’t have a good answer for, banana bread.

Sure I have my ever-popular small-batch banana muffins and my absolute fav chocolate banana muffins, but I’m SUPER picky about my banana bread, and I just didn’t have a favorite full-size banana bread recipe I could unreservedly recommend.

So over the last year, I set out testing and experimenting with recipes, and I finally have it, my favorite banana bread recipe in the world. Friend, you should really make Dominique Ansel’s banana bread.

Dominique Ansel’s Banana Bread

If you’re not familiar with Dominique Ansel, he is a French pastry chef, owner of the Dominique Ansel Bakery, and the creator of the famous cronut. This recipe comes from his (excellent) book Everyone Can Bake, and makes an incredibly good, incredibly easy sweet and moist loaf of banana bread.

What Makes This Banana Bread So Good

• An extra banana: Most banana bread recipes with a similar ratio of ingredients call for 3 bananas. This recipe uses 4, which boosts the banana flavor and the moist texture of the bread.
• Butter, a lot of it: There is also a slightly obscene amount of butter in this recipe. It gives the bread a fantastic richness and hint of buttery flavor that is SO good.
• Heavy on the sugar: This recipe also uses quite a bit of sugar compared to some banana bread recipes, so the bread is tender, sweet, and absolutely feels like a dessert treat (that you can eat for breakfast!!!).

Ingredient and Tool Notes

• 10 x 5-inch loaf pan: The original recipe calls for a 10 x 5-inch loaf pan. If your loaf pan is slightly smaller, not a problem. You just won’t need to use quite all of the batter when it’s time to bake the bread.
• Bananas: This recipe uses 4 medium bananas. If you prefer doing all your baking by weight, that’s about 400 grams of bananas, but I have successfully made this with slightly larger bananas, up to about 500 grams.
• Butter: You can use salted or unsalted butter here, just make sure to read the recipe notes and add more or less salt depending on which you’re using.
• Cinnamon sugar: This is optional, but I like my banana bread with a cinnamon sugar crust, so I added one here. If you’re not a huge fan of cinnamon or don’t want the extra sweetness, you can skip it.

How to Make the Best Banana Bread

1. Mix dry ingredients: In a large bowl, whisk together sugar, flour, baking powder, baking soda, nutmeg, and salt.

2. Mix most of the wet ingredients: In a medium bowl, mash bananas and whisk in eggs. Pour banana mixture into the dry ingredients and mix until combined.

3. Add the butter: Add melted butter, and mix until butter is incorporated into the batter. Don’t over mix, but there should not be pools of butter remaining around the edges of the batter.

4. Bake: Transfer the batter to your prepared loaf pan, leaving ¾-inch of space from the top of the pan (discard extra batter if there is too much). Sprinkle cinnamon sugar over the top and bake the bread for about an hour, until a toothpick or knife inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean.

5. Slice and enjoy: Allow bread to cool in the pan for 15 to 20 minutes before removing and slicing.

FAQ

How can I quickly ripen bananas for banana bread?

If your bananas aren’t quite brown enough for baking, it’s really easy to help them along. Bake the bananas (with their peels ON) on a baking sheet in a 300°F oven for 30 to 40 minutes until the peels are blackened and soft to the touch.

Let them sit until cool enough to handle and then peel and transfer bananas to a bowl and mash so that they cool more quickly. Cool completely before using in the banana bread.

If you want to see photos of this process, go check out my post How to Quickly Ripen Bananas.

How to Store Banana Bread

Store the bread tightly wrapped at room temperature for up to 3 days. For longer storage, freeze the baked bread.

How to Freeze Banana Bread

Banana bread freezes quite nicely, either as a whole loaf or individual slices. To freeze, wrap loaf/pieces tightly in plastic wrap and then store in an airtight container or freezer bag.

When you’re ready to eat the bread, remove it from the freezer, defrost at room temperature, and enjoy.

You Might Also Enjoy: How to Freeze Bananas

Can I make a small-batch version of this banana bread?

Don’t worry, small-batch friends, I haven’t forgotten about you. If you’d like to make a mini version of this bread, I scaled the recipe down for you so you can make it with just one banana and a mini loaf pan. Go check out my One-banana Banana Bread post.

More Banana Recipes

• Banana Milkshake
• Banana Pancakes
• Small Banana Cake
• Strawberry Banana Milkshake
• Banana Milkshake Without Ice Cream

Or check out this post of Banana Recipes.

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