Experimenting with almond flour: Banana bread

We came home to some super-ripe bananas in the fruit bowl... forgot to freeze those before we took off on vacation! My first thought with ripe bananas is banana bread, of course. I have a tried and true basic banana bread recipe in Fanny Farmer that I've used forever, but lately I've been wanting to experiment with almond flour as an ingredient, and that's something I don't think dear Fanny knew anything about. A blog about gluten-free cooking that I look in on occasionally, Elena's Pantry, advocates almond flour, and even though I don't need to avoid gluten (that I know of...), it just sounds good to me. Nutty and yummy and all that.

Of course, when I looked at the fat content of almond flour, I did a little quick breath intake and thought, "Oh my, well, at least it's the GOOD fat." Since I've been eating pretty much non-stop on the BAD fat lately, might as well do a bit of battle with the good... So I took Elena's recipe and fiddled with it--added back a bit of the Fanny--and it turned out wonderfully. Next time I might just make it with just the almond flour and skip the whole wheat entirely... we'll see.

Sher's experimental banana bread

2 cups blanched almond flour

2 cups whole wheat flour

½ teaspoon salt

1 ½ teaspoons baking soda

½ cup brown sugar

½ cup canola oil

3 eggs, whisked

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

4 bananas, mashed

In a large bowl, mix together whole wheat flour, almond flour, salt and baking soda. In a smaller bowl, combine mashed bananas, brown sugar, oil, eggs and vanilla. Mix wet ingredients into dry. Place batter in two greased/sprayed loaf pans. Bake at 350° for 40 minutes, or until skewer inserted into the bread comes out dry. Remove from oven and allow to cool.

I especially like the texture of the bread, and the feel as you're chewing; it's just less wheaty. It's hard to know how to describe it, exactly... you'll just have to try baking with almond flour. I think this ingredient is going to find its way into more of my recipes in the future...