Banana Nut Bread

By Nizhoni Benally

Recipe:

Servings: 8

Ingredients:

3 ripe bananas

½ C. sugar

2 eggs

2 C. flour

1 tsp baking soda

½ tsp salt

½ C. nuts (crushed pecans)

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 325°F
2. Put peeled bananas in a bowl and beat until it’s as smooth as possible.
3. Add all ingredients into the banana goo and mix together.
4. Grease a 9” by 5” inch pan and pour batter into the pan.
5. Bake in the oven for 1 hour.
6. Remove and let cool.

Helpful Hints:

Make sure that all of the ingredients are mixed thoroughly or the bread will have clumps of certain ingredients in certain places.

If it’s too hard to mix all of the ingredients at once, then you can add some of the ingredients then mix them and repeat until all ingredients are mixed well.

Recipe Notes:

        I used gluten free flour in the making of my banana bread, but the bread still baked and tasted the way it was supposed to originally. This change could possibly cause the results of the experiments to be different or not translate well.

Experiment:

First Experiment:

This recipe for banana bread calls for 3 ripe bananas, but the level of ripeness is never specified anywhere in the recipe. So I decided to play around with the bananas' ripeness in order to learn if it affects the bread at all and how it changes it.

I conducted five different experiments with bananas that were 4 days ripe to 8 days ripe. I started this experiment by buying enough bananas for five experiments and made one loaf of banana bread each day. Each day I made a loaf, the bananas would be one day more ripe than the last.

When I was finished making a loaf and allowing it to cool, I would put them in a bag and into the refrigerator. From my experience, this keeps the bread fresher for a longer period of time. This way, the older breads wouldn’t be stale compared to the newer breads and roughly have a similar freshness to them.

I then conducted a blind taste test experiment that consisted of four people to see how the breads’ tastes varied between each other. Each bread was labeled as the following:

        Day 4- Bread E

        Day 5- Bread D

        Day 6- Bread C

        Day 7- Bread B

        Day 8- Bread A

Each person filled out a form that asked them three questions:

How well did the bread taste?

How banana-y does the bread taste?

How moist does the bread taste?

Each person answered each question by rating each bread on a scale of 1 to 5. 1 was bad and 5 was good.

Every person showed varying answers to each question. The only consistency between each person was in question 1 where they rated Breads A and B were 4s or 5s. After that most of the other breads were rated 1 to 3. Question 2’s ratings were scattered all across the rating scale for each slice, so the only conclusion that could be drawn was that each person had their own taste for each bread or the bananas weren’t spread evenly through each loaf. Question 3’s answers all were in 4 or 5 rating with the exception of the 4th person's answers which were all 3s or 2s.

From this we can conclude that the breads with more ripe bananas generally tasted better and each person had their own different taste for the bread. It should be noted that even though the breads were put into the fridge to make sure they stayed freshed, their ages may still affect the taste of each bread. But from the research I conducted on how the bananas’ ripeness affects the taste of banana bread suggests otherwise. Refer to the “Why it Works” section for the research information.

Second Experiment:

Another test was conducted to test if the levels of moisture in the bread really did have much of a difference because it was the only one of the questions that could be tested differently to the others as it is not actually a taste.

This experiment was conducted three times with each bread. An oven was set to its lowest temperature, which was 170℉ for my oven, to avoid burning the food. One slice of each bread was then placed into the oven for 15 minutes. However, this seems to not be enough time to gain proper results because while the breads felt dryer and crumble when touched, each sliced only lost 0.1 ounce if they did lose any weight to them.

So each slice was put back into the oven, this time for 1 hour, in the hopes that better results can be obtained. The second round of baking the bread resulted in them losing 0.2 or 0.3 ounces from their first initial mass.

From this, it can be concluded that there was hardly any difference between each slice’s moisture content, but breads made more recently did lose more moisture than the older ones by 0.1 ounces. So there is barely a difference, but there is still a difference and it shows that the breads with the riper bananas had more moisture in them.

Experiment Notes:

I tried to remove the moisture from my bread with my oven at 170℉. However, 300℉ is much more effective at removing moisture and should be safe to use provided that the slices are not left in there for a long time.

Another way to do this experiment that might control for the age of the baked bread would be to buy 3 bananas each day for 5 days, looking each time for bananas that appeared to be similarly yellow. Bake the 5 loaves on the last day the bananas were purchased. The bananas purchased on the last day would be the least ripe and the bananas purchased on the first day would be the most ripe.

Why it Works:

The reason why the banana breads with the more ripe bananas may have tasted better to the four people is because more ripe bananas have more sugars in them. Bananas usually start out being mostly starch when they’re unripe. During the ripening process, pectinase breaks down the cell walls of bananas, then amylase can start to break down the starches. When the starches break down, they form into glucose and fructose. Glucose and fructose are a form of sugar and make bananas sweeter. So the breads with the more ripe bananas would most likely be more sweet and taste better compared to the other breads.

There was no evidence found in my research that bananas gained or lost moisture during their ripening process. However, I found that the banana peel does lose the water in it to the fruit it protects which is why the skin becomes weaker and thinner. So from this, it can be inferred that the banana pulp does gain moisture while it is ripening. But the test results show that the difference between the five breads’ moisture is minimal. It is possible for more noticeable changes in water content to appear if the days between the ripest and least ripest bananas were greater.

Commentary:

There was originally no instruction on how to make the recipe, just the ingredients, cook time and oven temperature. So I decided I would beat my bananas first to make them smooth and easily combinable with the other ingredients. I then added all the other ingredients together rather than add some then mixed because I’ve noticed that with recipes like this one they usually don’t change when using one method or the other. So I chose to go with the method that saved me more time and less of a hassle in figuring out how to combine ingredients and then mixing.

The banana bread recipe I used was my great-grandma Mary’s recipe and is part of my family’s ultimate cookbook with all of our go to recipes. Where my great-grandma got the recipe or if she made it herself is unknown to us but it is still delicious to eat either way.

Bibliography:

“Bananas, Sugar and Starch.” Alimentarium, 2021, https://www.alimentarium.org/en/magazine/kitchen/bananas-sugar-and-starch

Koester, Vera. “What Happens When Bananas Ripen?” Chemistry Europe, February 2, 2021, https://www.chemistryviews.org/details/video/11287161/What_Happens_When_Bananas_Ripen.html

Villazon, Luis. “Why do Banana Skins Get Thinner as the Fruit Ripens?” Science Focus, 2022, https://www.sciencefocus.com/nature/why-do-banana-skins-get-thinner-as-the-fruit-ripens/

Wiley, Suzanne. “Do Banana Skins Get Thinner as They Ripen?” SFGate, https://homeguides.sfgate.com/drought-tolerant-plants-outdoor-13771625.html

Wilson, Dede. “How to Ripen Bananas Instantly.” Bakepedia, 2017, https://www.bakepedia.com/tipsandtricks/ripen-bananas-instantly/#:~:text=During%20ripening%20the%20starches%20convert,makes%20the%20banana%20feel%20softer