Multi Grain Banana Bread

What will you do if you have bananas like this sitting on your counter? Most of the people I know will throw it in trash. Not me. I could've made some muffins, but I chose to experiment an yeast bread using bananas. You see, if you google for 'Banana Bread', you get mostly the quick bread recipes. On the top of this experiment, I also wanted to use some brown rice flour and barley flour. Here goes my experiment..

Ingredients:

1. Brown Rice flour - 1/2 cup
2. Bread Flour - 1 cup
3. Warm water - 3/4 cup
4. Sugar - 1 TBSP
5. Active dry yeast - 1/2 tsp
6. Non fat dry milk powder - 1 TBSP
7. Whole wheat flour - 1 + 1/2 cup (Use 1 cup first and the remaining only if needed)
8. Oil - 2 TBSP
9. Barley Flour - 1/4 cup
10. Vital Wheat gluten - 2 TBSP
11. Active dry yeast - 1 tsp
12. Salt - 1/2 tsp
13. Non fat dry milk powder - 1 TBSP 
14. Mashed bananas - 1 cup (I used 4 of them)
15. Cardamom - 7 pods powdered
16. Little milk for brushing the loaf before baking

Method:
The day before you plan on baking the bread:
In a bowl, mix first 6 ingredients with a wooden spoon. Cover with a plastic wrap and leave it on the kitchen counter for 8 - 10 hours (overnight).

The day you make the bread:
In another large bowl, combine the rest of the ingredients (1 cup of whole wheat flour) except milk for brushing and slowly pour the sponge (above) to it. Start mixing the dough. Depending on how moist your bananas are, you might have to add the rest of the wheat flour. Knead for 10 - 15 minutes. You could use a bread machine or a stand mixer with dough hook to make it easier. Coat with oil and leave it in a bowl. Let it rise for an hour or till double in volume.

 Punch down the dough. Spray vegetable oil spray to a 9 X 6 pan (you could use 9 X 5, but might get really high loaf or try reducing bananas to 3 and use less wheat flour. This can be baked in 9 X 5). This dough is a little sticky to shape very well. I didn't add more flour since I wanted lot of banana flavor. Pat the dough into the pan and try to smooth as much as possible. Cover with a greased aluminum foil and let it rest for 30 - 40 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 375 F. I did at 350 F since as you can see it is a dark pan. Brush the top of the loaf with milk. Bake for 25 - 30 minutes. Reduce the oven temperature to 350 F (in my case 325 F) and cover with an aluminum foil. Bake for another 10 - 12 minutes or till golden brown and sounds hollow when tapped at the bottom. Brown sugar caramelizes and gives it a nice brown crust. Cool in the pan for 5 minutes and turn on to the cooling rack for complete cooling. Slice when completely cool. It was an awesome bread which is a little denser on crumb structure but had lots of banana flavor.

I am sending this to Susan's 'Yeast Spotting' hosted here.  

Happy Baking!! Pin It