Redemption banana bread

Feb. 6, 2023

Tossed around the idea of baking for the better half of the day. The sink full of dishes was very dissuading since in order to get started baking, one must start with a clear head, and a dishful sink does not a clear head make. In short, I can't start a mess with a mess. However, once I received confirmation from saint of a husband that he would wash up the baking aftermath, I got to work, just as Monday's meditators began to arrive. I must admit that this was not ideal; existential baking is a solitary activity, and quite rightly so, as everyone's hovering around the kitchen corner having happy conversations made me feel like I had to hurry tf up or else be caught red-handed inaccurately measuring or something.

Anyways, after semi-successfully tuning them out I got down to it with this recipe: https://thesaltymarshmallow.com/best-banana-bread-recipe/ in an effort to make a better, hopefully tastier, moister, glutinous banana bread (bread? cake?) than last time.

This time I actually had more than 2 bananas, crucial I believe for achieving any kind of moistness in banana bread. I assembled everything very quickly and, for once, followed the recipe about 95%. I substituted Bob's Red Mill egg replacer for the regular egg of course and also put less sugar, just cause the bananas were black af and I thought that maybe that would make it extra sweet. I was wrong though. Always put the called for amount of sugar.

The batter came out ridic thicc and dense, more like a bread dough, which I found quite alarming. It could have been cause the egg replacer is just not as wet as egg and so it was a difficult, whisky business mixing up the batter/dough. Very very stretchy, glutinous texture too. Strands of batter were difficult to coax out of the bowl and very reluctant to plop into waiting loaf pan.

I put in oven and set timer on phone for 46 minutes, approximately 9 minutes less than the recipe called for. I don't know when I'm gonna learn that this oven we have is hot as hell compared to other ovens. I need to remember to either turn down temp or bake for less time. When I checked loaf at the end of time, not only had she RISEN but had gotten so dark, I thought there was actual burn marks.

Was so worried I overbaked yet another concoction, I sampled a piece straight from the hot pan, burned my tongue and found the crust to be way too crunchy. Once it cooled however and I was able to feed it to the meditators, I was pleasantly surprised to hear that this bananasperience was indeed an improvement over the last one?!

Vindicated, redeemed and moderately satisfied I ate 3 more pieces in order to accurately assess texture. Couldn't taste a thing cause of previously burned tongue but did find that within the overcooked crust, inner loaf moistness had been achieved.