Beard, Bread, Bananas

When it turns cold, grey and drizzly, I find myself needing banana bread. For me, banana bread represents that feeling of warmth and security that overcomes a person when walking through the front door after a trying day and a long, cold walk from the bus stop. A toasted slice or two, with a thin spreading of butter, and a cup of tea was my ultimate after-school snack.

Thus, last week, feeling rather nostalgic and counting down the days until returning to the Twin Cities for Christmas, I called home for the butter-stained page out of James Beard's Beard on Bread (Knopf, 1973). There are two versions--one with honey and another, without.

The beauty of Beard's recipe is in the 'buttermilk', which one makes by combining 1/3 cup milk and 1 tsp. fresh lemon juice. The tang of slightly curdled milk offsets the sweetness of the sugar and banana and rounds out the flavour of the bread. Armed with GourmetSleuth's gram conversion calculator, I set about converting the list of ingredients into grams. I've listed the rough conversions in the recipe below.

Now, I am not one to go about messing with a James Beard recipe, but I did feel that, in this instance, the combination of caster sugar and brown sugar, instead of granulated sugar alone, created a totally decadent caramelised note that I will not be able to do without from this point forward.

250g/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt

113 g/ 1.5 cup butter
62 g/ .5 cup caster sugar
62g/ .5 cup dark brown sugar*

2 eggs
230g/ 1 cup mashed banana

1/3 cup milk
1 tsp. lemon juice

* If you would prefer to stay true to Mr Beard's recipe, use 1 cup of granulated sugar

Sift the flour, baking soda and salt in a sieve and set aside. Cream the butter and sugar using electric beaters (MixMaster). Add the eggs and banana to the creamed butter and sugar, combine milk and lemon juice in a glass, and then add the dry ingredients and the milk mixture in alternating additions, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients. Fold in chocolate chips, raisins, or anything else that you fancy!

Pour the batter into a lavishly buttered loaf pan and bake at 350 F (176 C) for one hour.