Sourdough discard banana bread is a delicious way to use up the extra sourdough starter that’s left over when you feed the starter.
The discard gives your homemade banana bread a little extra flavor, and it pairs well with the flavor of the ripe bananas that you use to make the bread.
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The recipe.
Here’s the recipe, but read on to get tips on this bread, since the batter is a little different than what you’d expect!
Sourdough Discard Banana Bread
Equipment
- 1 mixing bowl
- 1 set of measuring spoons
- 1 set of measuring cups
- 1 Potato masher
- 1 rubber spatula
- 1 9×5 loaf pan
Ingredients
- 2 1/2 cups AP flour
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1/4 tsp nutmeg
- 3 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp salt
- 3 Tbsp vegetable oil
- 1/3 cup milk
- 1 egg
- 3 medium ripe bananas
- 1/2 cup sourdough discard
Instructions
- Put all of the ingredients in a large mixing bowl.
- Mash the bananas up with the potato masher and use the masher to start incorporating all of the ingredients together.
- When you've gotten everything fairly combined, switch to the rubber spatula and continue mixing.
- Mix until everything is well-combined. The batter will be thick and sticky!
- Grease the bottom of a loaf pan and pour the batter into it.
- Bake for an hour.
- Remove the loaf from the oven and put the pan on a wire rack to cool off. Don't take the bread out of the pan until it's cooled off. The residual heat will finish baking the batter in the pan.
- Cut and serve the bread. Store the loaf in an airtight container at room temperature, or wrap airtight and freeze.
Start with ripe bananas!
The bananas that you use need to be ripe or overripe, or they won’t be soft enough to mash up well. The ones in this picture were fine, but I could have let them go for another day or two to get a little more overripe.
Don’t use green bananas or yellow ones that don’t have the leopard-y brown spots! They’re not sweet enough and you’ll lose the banana flavor that overripe bananas will give you.
Mix the batter.
This banana bread recipe is a dump recipe, where you just dump everything into one bowl and mix it all up.
It’s very resilient and you don’t need to be delicate with it.
My trick to mixing the bananas in well is to use a potato masher for the first mix. Really break the bananas up and get the wet ingredients combined by crushing everything.
You’ll have to tip the bowl to mix the flour in, and it will be really stiff.
When all of the wet ingredients seem to be mixed up, switch to a rubber spatula to stir the batter.
This is a really stiff banana bread batter, so make sure to scrape the sides of the mixing bowl to make sure you get all of the flour combined.
When everything is mixed up, the batter will be stiff and sticky. The sourdough discard makes it feel more “gluey,” for lack of a better description.
Don’t worry, it will bake up just fine!
Click here for an easy sourdough starter recipe.
Bake the banana bread.
Grease the bottom of a loaf pan and put the batter into it.
I used this glass Anchor Hocking loaf pan (#ad), it’s the perfect size for this recipe.
Bake in a 350F oven for about an hour.
The internal temperature should be about 180 when you take it out of the oven (use an instant-read thermometer in the bottom of the loaf to test it.) Remove the loaf from the pan to measure the temp from the bottom, or just insert the thermometer into the top if you don’t mind there being a hole in the bread!
Click here for a 3-ingredient beer bread recipe. And for an applesauce cinnamon sourdough bread recipe, click here.
Cool and serve.
I leave the loaf in the pan to cool it off while it sits on a wire rack. The residual heat from the pan and the bread will finish the baking process.
When the bread has cooled for about an hour, remove from the loaf pan and serve it, or store it in an airtight container or ziplock bag.
I like a dense banana bread, and this recipe delivers. It’s good to eat by itself, or to spread with jam or butter.
This bread is dense enough that you could also toast it, but it’s probably too soft to use for sandwiches unless you wanted to let it dry out a little.
You could also toast it and spread with peanut butter for a real treat…Or add sliced bananas to the peanut butter for a banana overload.
The sourdough discard gives it a little bit of extra flavor, and the spices pair well with it to give it a subtle hint of cinnamon. This bread is really good!
