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.
So I made this recipe but I halved it and it turned out great. Instead of making one 8×4 I made two tiny loaf pans. Halving three bananas made me nervous so I used two bananas then added like 3/4 T of more flour. And I am glad I did because it packs som good banana flavor for such a cute little loaf.
Anyways, I was wondering if you have tried this or other banana bread recipes with white whole wheat or just whole wheat flour? This recipe is amazing on it’s own, but healthifying it would help me justify finishing a loaf in a day :)
Thanks for trying the recipe and I’m glad it came out great for you with halving it and as mini loaves. I haven’t tried with w.w. flour of any sort and have only made it with AP flour. Baking with w.w.flour can be tricky because things don’t rise as well, w.w. sucks more moisture out of the batter and things can turn dry more easily, and you’d have to experiment with the recipe to see how things would work.
I made this today and it was delicious! The only thing I did differently was add chocolate chips. It was a hit at home and with the next door neighbors. Great recipe!
Thanks for trying the recipe and I’m glad it came out great for you! You have lucky neighbors :)
I’ve tried many different banana bread recipes as well (most of them are from you!) but I’ve always wondered how to choose the best one. Do you have a favorite or are they all good for different reasons?
I liked this one, and I really like/love the base I use for the cream-cheese filled banana bread recipe I developed. With or without cream cheese, I love that one. I also really like the 6-banana recipe as well as my classic original banana bread recipe…all of these are linked in the post.
Congrats on all the banana features…that’s all sorts of awesome!! And this banana bread looks amazing just like all the rest of yours. I need to get some of those smaller bread pans, because I hear you on not getting every loaf to bake right in the bigger ones.
I think smaller pans in general are just easier to deal with so you don’t get that unexpected gooey center AFTER you’ve already let the bread cool. Whoops :)
I have this recipe cut out from a magazine years ago and it is one of my favorites as well!
GORGEOUS banana bread, Averie! I mean, just look at that crumb. Fabulous photos, as always, too. :) Congrats on the HuffPo feature, my friend! xo Pinning (of course)!
Thanks for saying hi!!! Been wondering how you’ve been doing! Thanks for the sweet comment and the pin!! :)
Wow Averie, congrats on the HuffPo love!! That’s incredible — 8 recipes?? All for banana bread? I need to move down to SoCal asap so I can taste test more of them for you! Although I’d probably be lucky to get a crumb with how quickly this one disappeared… ;)
My family totally inhaled this, well…okay…I helped, a lot. I love banana bread :)
Have your tried the Dominque Ansel (he of Cronut fame) recipe for Banana bread?
No I have not.
WOW!! Congrats on the Huff post shouts! Fabulous Averie! And this bread…gotta be the best evahhhh. xoxo
It’s only 1:30pm but I need one of your famous Marla cocktails about now :)
I was skeptical at first about this bread being so good but I have to say it was pretty amazing in my opinion. My husband ate it right up; I barely got two slices.
Thanks for trying the recipe and I’m glad it came out great for you! Sounds like it came out so great your husband hogged it all :)
The inside looks perfect! The thick slices arewayyy up my alley too :-)
This is the prettiest banana bread and the texture looks perfect!
i can see why it is so famous! it looks delicious and moist and perfectly sweet
I love good, soft banana bread. I can’t wait to try it out! (Probably this weekend by the looks of the current state of my bananas!)
You can never have too many banana bread recipes! This one looks delicious!! :)
I love the thick slices Averie..I always buy more bananas than I can possible eat so that I bake with them! Thanks for the tip on using smaller pans, makes so much sense.