Banana Bread (Beth Hensperger, Bread Bible)

Banana-Walnut Bread from Beth Hensperger's Bread Bible. 

I like Beth Hensperger's recipes, for they never disappoint, although I admit I am rarely successful with them right away. This stunning bread is also insanely delicious, off the charts good. My newbie mistake was that I ignored Beth's advice to butter and flour the bread pan before filling it with batter. I thought I could skip that step, because my pan was non-stick... So my banana bread was ruined when I tried to take it out of pan, half of it stuck to the bottom of the pan, and ... oh well. It was still delicious. 

Just like her other banana bread from the Bread Machine book, this one becomes incredibly better after several hours in the fridge. It is quite good when hot or warm, but it really shines after at least 12 hrs of refrigeration. Amazing, amazing quality. Moist, tender and fiercely fragrant, better than any other variation of banana bread of this type I have tried before. Really. It is so good, it is worth buying bananas especially for it, and baking double batches because everyone in the family will have a second and a third helping of it. 

I like my banana breads dark brown in color of their crumb, even when they are without sour cream or chocolate in the recipe. So I used whole wheat flour instead of regular all-purpose flour in the example that I show. To make it even darker, switch to dark brown sugar by weight. For those, who don't use cup measurements, I give equivalents in grams. 



Banana Bread
1 loaf in 8"x4"pan

1 1/4 cup unbleached all purpose flour (170g)
or whole wheat all-purpose flour
1 tsp soda (4.6g)
1/2 tsp salt (3g)

1 cup sugar (230g)
1/2 cup oil (110g)

2 large eggs (100g)
3 medium overripe bananas (1 1/4 cup, 340g)


1 tsp vanilla extract (5g)
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

3/4 cup walnuts, chopped, roasted (90g), optional
Instead of walnuts, this bread takes well to dressing it up with dried cranberries, prunes, figs, or dates, unsweetened crushed pineapple, or shredded coconut in the batter to change the character of the basic loaf.


Preheat oven to 350F. Butter and flour the bread pan. Roast and chop walnuts: I roasted frozen whole walnuts in microwave for 3 min, then chopped them coarsely.

Blend flour, salt, soda and cinnamon. Beat sugar, eggs and oil on high speed until creamy, 2 min; add mashed bananas and vanilla. Beat until well combined. Blend wet and dry until creamy, add nuts and bake for 1 hr in a 350F oven, convection setting.

Banana Bread baking in the oven. 

Wrap tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight or up to 5 days before serving.

Source: Beth Hensperger, 2004, The Bread Bible: 300 Favorite Recipes.

Beth bakes this loaf with white all-purpose flour and white sugar, so its crumb looks very light in color, as shown on the cover of her book for William-Sonoma. 

Mine always turn dark after baking, both with whole wheat (slice on top) and with white flour (bottom slice). I don't know why. Once, I baked it with whole grain spelt flour and it turned literally black during baking, like devil's cake black. Insanely delicious too!