Hey, foodies in the hive!
I hope you're having a nice week. Do you like banana bread? How sweet do you like it? I like it only a little sweet so they can go with my morning eggs, with chunks of walnuts and bitter chocolate to make my spirits happier and feel more energetic. There's happiness in the little details, don't you think?, like delicious homemade breakfast & coffee.
It'd been a long time since I had worked with sourdough.
I think it was Christmas 1999 when I made panettone with dough I had fermented with apple and pineapple peels.
I was being taught by a dear friend; we were working four-handed, so I had a hard time remembering the whole process after that, and so years went by without me making sourdough again; you see, for these things, I'm more of a kinesthetic learning type, that is, I learn by doing rather than by seeing.
I didn't know anything about the benefits of sourdough then; I only did it for the taste, the nice aroma and texture it gave to the panettone, and as always, I did it out of curiosity--and for the sake of deliciousness, haha.
I now know that sourdough is good for the intestinal microbiota and that it also lowers the glycemic index of meals.
Although the wheat we use is still transgenic and etc..., sourdough bread is always a healthier option. Even someone like me, slightly intolerant to gluten, can experience the difference that eating this type of bread makes; all the negative effects are significantly reduced. In fact, it goes down my stomach smoothly.
INGREDIENTS
600 gr overripe bananas (the more overripe the sweeter)
100 gr white sugar
50 gr granulated piloncillo
1/2 cups egg
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
75 ml coconut oil
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
2 teaspoons vanilla essence
250 gr all purpose flour
100 gr sourdough (that you're going to discard)
75 gr bitter chocolate (I used Savoy for desserts)
100 gr walnuts--next time, I'd like to use 200 gr instead
- enough coconut oil to grease the baking mold
THE PROCESS
Except for the process of preparing your own sourdough, this banana bread is super easy to make.
To make my starter, I added two tablespoons of all purpose flour (14gr protein), 1 teaspoon granulated piloncillo, 4 tablespoons of water, and 2 tablespoons of wheat bran in a glass jar. I mixed it well and kept on feeding it everyday for 5 days. Feeding it means, adding more flour and water and mixing, discarding the excess on the third day. I'm planning to make a post of this.
This is what I did:
I peeled and mashed the bananas. Then I added the sugars and eggs, and mixed well with a fork.
Then I added the salt, nutmeg, cinnamon, and coconut oil. I mixed well again, with the fork.
I sifted the flour...
I added the baking soda and apple cider vinegar...
...and let them work their magic.
Immediately after that, I added the sourdough and mixed well with a pastry spoon, folding the batter. Oh, and I added the vanilla essence, which I almost forgot!
The batter had to sit for a couple of hours, so I had enough time to have coffee, chop the chocolate into little chunks of about 1 cm and coarsely crush the walnuts.
After two hours, the batter had almost doubled its size and turned spongy. I poured a third of it into the greased baking mold.
I place some chunks of chocolate and walnuts on top of the batter and poured the rest of the batter mixed with the rest of the chocolate and walnuts. I saved some chocolate and walnuts to put on top of the loaf for a nice look.
I let it bake for 60 minutes in my little electric oven, at 300°F. I was really pleased with result, even when the walnuts I had carefuky placed on top went wherever they wanted, haha. "You live, you learn," says Alanis Morrisette.
I unmolded it as soon as I could to let cool on a rack. It unmolded so easily, and that's the magic of coconut oil and sourdough.
Enjoy!
All text and images are my own. I have taken the pictures with my Redmi 9T cell phone. And if any GIFs here, I've used GIPHY for all them.
Thank you so much for your visit :)
