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Best Banana Bread Recipe (Moist!)

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The moist Banana Bread recipe you’ve been searching for! I tested a ton of different recipes so you don’t have to. The result is a bread that is super moist (thank you sour cream) and perfectly fluffy. It’s full of banana flavor without being too dense. It’s my favorite banana nut bread! And it’s easy to make!

Ingredients

Scale
  • 1/2 cup butter, 1 stick, softened
  • 1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
  • 1/2 cup granulated sugar
  • 2 large eggs
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 1 cup mashed ripe banana, 9 ounces*, about 2 and 1/2 medium bananas
  • 1 cup all-purpose flour, spooned and leveled
  • 1/2 cup old fashioned oats, blended into a powder**
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 & 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
  • 1/2 cup sour cream
  • 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon, optional
  • 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg, optional
  • 1/8 teaspoon cloves, optional
  • 1/2 to 3/4 cup toasted pecans or walnuts, optional

Instructions

  1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. Spray a 9×5 inch loaf pan with nonstick spray, or line with parchment paper. I prefer using the paper so that you can lift the bread out for easy slicing.
  2. If you plan to add nuts, toast them now so they have time to cool. Add 1/2 or 3/4 cup chopped nuts (I like either walnuts or pecans) to a dry baking sheet. Bake at 350 for 5-7 minutes, stirring every 2 minutes. You will know they are done when they are very fragrant. Set aside to let cool.
  3. In a large bowl or stand mixer, beat the butter until it is smooth, scraping the sides of the bowl. Add 1/2 cup brown sugar and 1/2 cup white sugar and cream together. This means beat it for about 2 minutes until it is fluffy, making sure to scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl.
  4. Add 2 eggs and 2 teaspoons vanilla. Beat well until incorporated, scraping the sides.
  5. In a small bowl, use a fork or potato masher to mash about 2 and 1/2 very ripe bananas. It should come out to about 1 cup.* A little more or a little less banana, and you are still going to get banana bread. (More banana=more dense. Less banana does NOT make your banana bread not-moist.) 1 cup is the magic number for me. Add the mashed banana to the butter mixture and stir until incorporated.
  6. Add 1 cup flour to the bowl, but do not stir yet. (You can mix the dry ingredients in a separate bowl but I am too lazy.)
  7. Add 1/2 cup old fashioned oats to a blender or food processor. Blend until the mixture has turned into powder, if it's a little gritty that's okay. Add the oat flour to the bowl but don't stir.
  8. Use a small spoon to stir 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1 and 1/2 teaspoons baking powder, and 3/4 teaspoon kosher salt into the flour. You don't want any clumps of salt or soda in your bread.
  9. At this point, you can add 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon and 1/8 teaspoon each cloves and nutmeg. This bread is still really good without the spices, they are optional.
  10. Stir the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until incorporated, scraping the sides and bottom.
  11. Lastly (don’t forget!!) fold in the 1/2 cup sour cream.
  12. If you want to add nuts, fold them into the batter now. (Next time I think I will save 1/4 cup to sprinkle on top of the bread before going in the oven. Just an idea!)
  13. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and smooth out the top.
  14. Bake at 350 for 55-65 minutes. Every oven is different and you are probably going to have to check it a few times. There is nothing sadder than undercooked banana bread, so I rely completely on the toothpick test: a toothpick inserted very deeply into the center of your bread (stick it right into the crack that has formed) should come out with no wet batter on it. Very moist crumbs are ok, as the bread will continue cooking just a bit once pulled out of the oven. The bread should look nice and brown on top and should be pulling away from the sides of the pan.
  15. Let the bread cool completely (okay, well at least for 20 minutes or so) on a cooling rack before slicing into it. If you don't devour a warm slice immediately with copious amounts of butter, it's a crime against bananas everywhere.
  16. Store covered on the counter for up to 2 days, then if there is by some miracle some leftover, I would stick it in the fridge.
  17. Banana bread freezes beautifully. You can wrap an entire loaf in foil and then ziplock and freeze (thaw on the counter with the bag sealed) or you can slice it and wrap and freeze individual portions for when you need a quick fix. Let thaw on the counter in the sealed container. Toss thawed slices in the toaster for a minute to get rid of extra moisture.

Notes

*I like 1 cup banana bread, but as discussed in the post, you can add up to 2 cups (18 ounces) of mashed banana (and change NOTHING else in the recipe), and it will turn out fine. “Fine” meaning overly dense and gummy in my opinion 😉 But if you serve it to people they will still say, “ooh, this is great banana bread!” Trust me, I did. There are many, many banana bread recipes out there that call for these same proportions with 2 cups banana.
** You can replace the oats with 1/2 cup all purpose flour if you want!
I published this recipe back in 2020 and since then, hundreds and hundreds of people have made this lovely bread. It’s one of my favorite recipes and one of the most popular posts on my site. The recipe is rated 4.8 stars, and you can read through the comments to see so many success stories with this bread.
BUT! Occasionally a comment comes in saying that the bread overflowed and made a mess in the oven. I’ve baked this recipe so many times and this NEVER happens for me, not even close. I was so befuddled. I asked my BFF (and recipe development assistant) Sarah to test the bread. HERS OVERFLOWED! I was devastated…then I asked her to bust out the measuring tape and measure the inside of what she was confident was a 9×5 inch pan…it was actually an 8.5 x 4.25 inch loaf pan. You would not think this makes much of a difference, but it totally does!
BUT, even more good news. I tested the recipe a bunch more, reducing the baking powder to 1.5 teaspoons instead of 2.5, and I was happy with the result. So hopefully for all the bakers out there who have slightly-smaller-than-9×5 inch pans, this will solve the overflow problem. If you have been making this recipe successfully, you can make it the same way you always have! For newcomers, I’m changing the recipe to 1.5 teaspoons baking powder, just to save the small-pan people from having to scrub their ovens 😉

Nutrition

Find it online: https://www.delicetreats.com/moist-banana-bread-with-sour-cream/