Flour’s Banana Bread — Made with Flour Bakery’s famous recipe to see if it lives up to the hype. Verdict? Totally fabulous! Make it!!
Flour Bakery’s Banana Bread Recipe
I love banana bread. A whole lot. I have over 30 different recipes for banana bread and dozens more for banana muffins and banana cakes. The Huffington-Post just linked to eight of my recipes in their recent Every Banana Bread Recipe You Could Possibly Want article.
I’m always up for trying new banana bread recipes, and when I stumbled on a recipe from the famous Flour Bakery and Cafe of Boston in the Flour cookbook and on Food Network with 544 five-star reviews, I was eager to give it a try to see how it compared to one of my all-time favorites.
The banana bread is soft, very moist thanks to the use of oil rather than butter, and perfectly dense. I like angel food cake to be light and airy but never my banana bread. If you like denser banana bread with substance, you’ll love this one.
I mostly stayed true to the Flour recipe although it called for 3 1/2 bananas and I used three. Typically in banana bread recipes the estimate is that one medium/large banana yields one-half cup of mashed banana. I had a solid one and a half cups of mashed banana.
I slightly reduced the sugar and slightly increased the flour. The bread was plenty sweet even with the sugar reduction and the extra flour firmed up the batter so it wasn’t too thin.
Because I find banana bread notoriously difficult to cook through before the edges and top become overly browned when baked as one large 9×5-inch loaf, I split the batter between two 8×4-inch loaf pans. That way there’s one loaf to eat fresh, and one loaf to freeze or give away.
Just kidding. We’re such banana bread fiends that the first loaf was gone the first day and we moved onto the second loaf the next day. I wouldn’t say it’s ‘better than’ my favorite, but it’s very good and you can never have too many ways to use ripe bananas.
Tip: If you love classic banana bread recipes like this one, you may also enjoy making homemade zucchini bread as well!
What’s in Flour’s Banana Bread?
To make this copycat Flour Bakery banana bread recipe, you’ll need:
- Eggs
- Granulated sugar
- Canola oil
- Bananas
- Sour cream
- Vanilla extract
- All-purpose flour
- Baking soda
- Salt
- Cinnamon
How to Make Flour’s Famous Banana Bread
Using a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat together the eggs and sugar. Then, drizzle in the oil. The wet ingredients are added in next, followed by the dry.
Turn the batter into two greased and floured 8×4-inch loaf pans. Bake until the tops are domed, set, and a toothpick inserted in the center crack comes out clean or with a few moist crumbs but no batter.
This moist banana bread will need to cool for 15 to 30 minutes before you can slice into it.
How to Store Banana Bread
This copycat Flour’s banana bread will keep airtight at room temperature for up to 1 week or in the freezer for up to 6 months.
Can I Add Mix-Ins?
I bet you can! Chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, chopped nuts, and chocolate chunks would all be great additions.
Tips for Making Flour’s Famous Banana Bread
I’ve only made this recipe as written so I can’t speak to what you’d need to change to make this in a 9×5-inch loaf pan. Ditto if you want to make muffins using this recipe.
Make sure your bananas are very ripe. The riper your bananas, the sweeter your banana bread will be.
If you don’t have a stand mixer, you can use a handheld electric mixer to make the batter. Just note that it will take a little longer to beat everything together.
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Flour's Famous Banana Bread
Ingredients
- 2 large eggs
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- ½ cup canola or vegetable oil
- 3 medium/large ripe bananas, peeled and mashed (about 1 1/2 cups when mashed)
- 2 tablespoons creme fraiche or sour cream, Greek yogurt may be substituted; I used lite sour cream
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon salt, or to taste
- ¼ teaspoon cinnamon
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350F. Spray two 8×4-inch loaf pans with floured cooking spray, or grease and flour the pans; set aside.
- To the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment (or large mixing bowl and electric mixer) add the eggs, sugar, and beat on medium-high speed until smooth, well-combined, and mixture is golden yellow in color, about 4 to 5 minutes.
- Stop, scrape down the sides of the bowl, and with the mixer running on low speed, slowly drizzle in the oil. Don’t dump it all in at once. Beat at medium speed until incorporated, about 1 to 2 minutes.
- Stop, scrape down the sides of the bowl, and add the bananas, sour cream, vanilla, and beat on medium-high speed until combined, about 1 to 2 minutes.
- Stop, scrape down the sides of the bowl, and add the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and beat on low speed until just combined, about 1 minute.
- Turn batter out into prepared pans, smoothing the tops lightly with a spatula if necessary, and bake for about 35 to 40 minutes (I baked 37 minutes), or until tops are domed, set, a toothpick inserted in the center crack comes out clean or with a few moist crumbs but no batter. Optionally, in the last 5 to 10 minutes of baking, tent pans with foil (loosely drape a sheet of foil over pans) to prevent excessive browning on the top and sides of bread before center cooks through.
- Remove pans from oven and allow to them to cool on top of a wire rack for about 15 to 30 minutes before turning out onto rack to cool completely.
Notes
- Bread will keep airtight at room temperature for up to 1 week or in the freezer for up to 6 months.
- Adapted from the Flour cookbook and Food Network.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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More Homemade Banana Bread Recipes:
ALL OF MY BANANA BREAD RECIPES!
Cream Cheese-Filled Banana Bread — Banana bread that’s like having cheesecake baked in! Soft, fluffy, easy and tastes ahhhh-mazing!
Browned Butter Buttermilk Banana Bread with Strawberry Butter – The browned butter and buttermilk add richness, softness, and moisture, and the strawberry butter makes it that much better!
Peach Mango Coconut Oil Banana Bread — The coconut oil pairs so perfectly with the peaches and mangoes!
Strawberry Banana Bread — This strawberry bread is packed with fresh, juicy strawberries in every bite! This is an easy, no-mixer quick bread recipe you’re going to love!
Pineapple Coconut Oil Banana Bread – Buttermilk, bananas and coconut oil keep this bread super moist, tender and it tastes like a tropical vacation!
Brown Sugar Blueberry Banana Bread with Blueberry Butter – Blueberry coffee cake meets super soft banana bread!
Six-Banana Banana Bread – Six bananas in one loaf of bread means an extremely soft, moist, and richly flavored bread!
Zucchini Banana Bread — This zucchini banana bread is so soft, tender, uber-moist, dense enough to be satisfying, but still light! It’s just sweet enough to taste like a dessert and not like you’re eating vegetables.
How could you not like banana bread? I like mine with extra nuts, and sometimes if I want to indulge- chocolate. Yum!
It looks fabulous, just like all your banana bread recipes!! I could eat banana bread every single day and never get tired of it. Pinned!
I still haven’t tried your mom’s banana bread – I really want to try that one! But I wouldn’t post it, obviously :)
This is the third banana recipe I’ve seen in the last two days that has made me want to go buy ripe bananas. This, as you know, is saying something coming from a banana hater like me.
I’m taking it as a sign and I’m off to the store now!
It was Natl Banana Bread Day on Monday and even I noticed an uptick in the amount of banana bread recipes floating around and in random coincidence this recipe was on my calendar for 2 months on this date; had no idea it was going to closely coincide!
And I know you hate bananas but…they are soooooooo good to bake with! Mmm :)
We seem to be eating through bananas before they get to the good baking stage–this sounds really good! Maybe I need to over-buy bananas soon …
I have been waiting for one of my grocery stores to have a big bundle of almost black beat-up red-ribbon banana bundles where they’re like almost free…and almost rotting :) My favorites for baking with!
I completely understand your love of banana bread! I’m a fan of banana anything. Subconsciously I always leave a few fresh bananas to overripen so I have an excuse to bake them!
Love the way you think :)
The texture on this bread looks flawless. Seriously 30 bread recipes? I’m gonna call you queen of the banana. Wait. That doesn’t sound right, LOL. PINNED :)
Queen of the Margarita, Queen of the Champagne, Queen of the Banana…it’s all good :) And thanks for pinning!
Even though I live in Boston and have been to Flour countless times, I’ve never had the banana bread… Which is a shame because I love banana bread. And this one looks fabulous.
Omg I would love to try the real thing and then see how it compares to the homemade! If you ever do go there and order the banana bread, tweet me or FB me and LMK what you think of it!! Jealous you live so close to the bakery!
I love a dense banana bread like this! Definitely need to try!!
Thanks for sharing your banana bread passion with us!
We are banana bread twins today! I posted it as well.
I could eat banana bread for breakfast, lunch and dinner so I clearly am going to have to eat my way through this (and those other linked recipes) and I am 100% not sorry about it. Pinned!
Thanks for pinning and just pinned yours :) I made some blueberry banana bread about a year ago and yours reminds me that that’s such a great combo!
Ok I’ve made your cream cheese filled banana bread more times than I can remember and it is the best. I’ll give this recipe a try but I doubt it will come close to yours.
Cream cheese filling aside, this one just in terms of bread texture seems a bit more ‘oily’ than my cream cheese version. Not oily in a bad way, just a bit more dense, not quite as fluffy. I like both bases for different reasons but I would probably go with mine if I had to choose…not that I’m partial or anything :)
Since you’ve made my cream cheese version so many times, LMK what you think of this one if you try it and how they compare! Love different perspectives and opinions!
You can never have too many recipes calling for bananas, chocolate, and peanut butter! I would love to be able to pull off a quick bread in an oversized loaf pan (like Starbucks) but as you said, the edges become overdone to the point of crispy before the middle is done. There must be some commercial baking secret….
I did get my https://www.averiecooks.com/2015/02/apple-fritter-bread.html to cook through in a 9×5 pan BUT that had very little flour for a pan that big because most of the bulk that takes up all the room in the pan comes from apples, not flour, so no worried about cooking through.
I also got my Lemon Loaf to cook through in a 9×5 pan but https://www.averiecooks.com/2015/01/best-lemon-loaf-better-starbucks-copycat.html but that only took me like 12 tries, spanning 3 years. No lie!
Which is why in general yes, I divide bread recipes, especially banana bread! into two pans…just safer. Commercial ovens I swear just can handle things on a whole other level than household appliances.
Banana bread is such a comfort food on mine. I actually have a loaf in the freezer that I may have to take out tonight for snacking. I’m going to Boston in April and will have to go to Flour Bakery and taste this banana bread! :)
Oh if you do go, please LMK what you think of it! I have 0 plans to be in Boston in the next, oh, 10 years :) San Diego is home and don’t envision myself being able to try it firsthand, so please LMK if you do! And enjoy your snacking loaf tonight :)
It was super smart of you to use two pans. Otherwise, a dense bread can take forever to bake on the inside while getting way to brown on the outside. That’s never fun while you’re sawing through the top with a serrated knife. Your solution is much better!
This looks absolutely perfect. And the thick slices are essential, too! :)
I cannot tell you how many loaves I’ve ruined from either the sawing through situation if I bake longer OR baking less and then slice into a raw loaf that’s already been cooling for a few hours. Gah. So frustrating so with banana bread, I divide the batter usually!
Mmm, you can never have enough banana bread. There’s endless combos and an endless amount of shriveled black bananas in my freezer. Oh, and you definitely have to try Flour’s sticky buns and chocolate chip cookies (either homemade or fresh from the bakery; they’re both great!).
I would love to try their sticky buns and choc chip cookies! Wish I lived closer! One day hopefully I can sample firsthand!
I adore your banana bread fixation. In fact I’ve been eyeing the banana recipes in you PB Comfort book…Which I’m writing about for Hello Giggles this week albeit I am doing cookies for that column:)
If you have a link to the column when it’s done, send it over – would love to see it and thanks for featuring my book in it! :)