Sourdough Banana Bread
One of my most popular recipes (both online and in real life!), you’ll come back to this soft and sweet loaf over and over. Makes 1 loaf.
What You’ll Need
Ingredients
- ⅓ cup butter, softened
- 1 cup white sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 egg
- 3 bananas, mashed
- 1 cup discard sourdough starter (cold is fine!)
- 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
Equipment
- electric mixer (hand mixer is fine)
- standard-sized or large-sized loaf pan (8½ x 4½ inches or 9 x 5 will both work, but a smaller one will overflow!)
Instructions
Make sure your pan is the right size! (8½ x 4½ or larger.) If you don’t have one, better to use a 8×8 or 9×9 square.
Prep the pan
Preheat the oven to 350°F and grease a loaf pan with vegetable oil spray or butter. Like most sweet bread recipes, this one can stick a bit, so make sure you spray generously.
Cream the butter and sugar
Beat the butter and sugar together until they are nice and fluffy.
I always like to set a timer for this step for 3 minutes because it’s tempting to underbeat here and think it is good enough. But this makes a difference! The butter should visibly lighten in color.
Add the egg and vanilla
Next, add the egg and vanilla, mixing until just combined.
This will take under a minute, but take a second to scrape down the bottom of the bowl and mix again.
Add the banana and starter
Add the mashed bananas and the sourdough starter and mix again until combined.
It will only take about 30 seconds or so.
Mix the dry ingredients
Finally, add the dry ingredients. You can (and sometimes I do), mix them up in a small bowl first, but sometimes I just dump them right on top.
Don’t overmix here or you’ll have a tough loaf. Just until everything is combined, scrape the bottom of the bowl, and mix another couple of seconds.
If you would like to add crushed walnuts or chocolate chips, do so now. A bit under a cup of either works well.
Bake the loaf
Pour the batter into your well-greased loaf pan and smooth out the top. (It will be thick!)
Pop it into your preheated oven and bake for 60-70 minutes until a toothpick comes. out with just a few moist crumbs. The top will split. That’s okay! (In fact, it’s a sign of a good quick bread! Now you know.)
Cool and slice
Wait until it’s mostly cool to slice (slightly warm is okay, but not hot). I will keep this out oat room temperature for up to three days with no trouble.
Storage Instructions
For longer storage, my favorite method is to slice, wrap each piece individually, then put them all in a gallon freezer bag. You can defrost one serving at a time very easily this way.
Of course, a whole loaf freezes well too.
Sourdough discard Breakfast Recipes
- Sourdough banana cake
- Ever-popular sourdough lemon cake
- Sourdough banana muffins
- Sourdough cinnamon sugar quick bread
Sourdough Banana Bread
Equipment
- standard size loaf pan (8 ½ by 4 ½ or slightly larger is fine)
Ingredients
- ⅓ cup softened butter
- 1 cup white sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 egg
- 3 bananas ripe and mashed
- 1 cup discard sourdough starter
- 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
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Instructions
- Prep. Preheat oven to 350. Prepare a loaf pan by greasing with vegetable oil spray or butter.
- Beat butter and sugar. Beat the butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl with an electric mixer on medium speed.
- Add egg and vanilla. Add the egg and vanilla, mixing until combined. Scrape down the bowl with a spatula and mix again.
- Add bananas and starter. Add the mashed banana and sourdough starter, mixing on low.
- Dry ingredients. In a separate medium mixing bowl mix the flour, salt, baking soda, and baking powder. Add it to the wet ingredients and mix on low until just combined. Overmixing will make the loaf tough.
- Bake. Pour into a loaf pan, smoothing out the top with a spatula, and bake in a preheated oven for 60-75 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. The top will split.
- Cool and slice. Allow to cool before slicing. Store at room temperature, tightly wrapped, for up to three days.
Video
Notes
Nutrition
hi ruth no it does not, cold is fine
I just made it!! My family LOVED it!!!!! Thanks for the recipe!!
hey Jessica! I’m so so glad!
one of our favorite recipes. I followed the recipe as is for the first bake afterwards I did adjust to our sweetnesspreference 1/2 cup of sugar , 4 bananas and walnuts.
we all love it!
This bread is delicious. I added walnuts which we really liked. I initially used the size of loaf pan recommended and after 5 minutes in the oven had to transfer to a larger loaf pan. The bread did not rise as in the photo but still tastes good. A bit sweet for my taste so next time I might reduce the sugar a bit. I will definitely make it again.
Great flavor but my loaf overflowed too! Shoot!
Hi, does this recipe make one loaf? I just made it and tripled it (I have a lot of kids) and all the loaf pans overflowed in the oven.
Hey Elana just one loaf! I’m not sure what happened! I use a 8.5 x 2.5 x 4.5 pan with no problem.
I love this! I’ve made it twice now! Both times I added walnuts and blueberries! Thank you for sharing this!!
I have made A LOT of banana bread. Many different recipes and this was hands down literally my BEST loaf ever!! Deleting any and all other recipes!! This was also my first time using my discard. I didn’t have enough but I was so excited and had this on my mind to bake so I baked with only having 1/2 cup discard. It was still AMAZING. My little girl wanted to add chocolate chips but it would have been heavenly without them. Thank you sooo much. I cannot wait to gather more discard 😅
I’m so, so happy you enjoyed it Angela! Thanks for letting me know 💕
First time I am going to make anything with discard starter. Have a jar of discard in the fridge – do I need to take it out and feed it the night before or can I just use from the fridge
I would love to try this recipe! How much butter does it call for? It says “? cup butter”. Thanks for your help.
i’m suzy! i’m so sorry, i just changed fonts on my blog and all my 1/3 turned into ? 😭😭😭😭. So it’s 1/3! I’m going to fix it now!
Have you ever made these into muffins? If so do you know how long they would need to bake?
hi aubrey I haven’t but it *should* work. Maybe start checking at 20 minutes? (Also I have a banana muffin recipe on my blog with a really good caramel drizzle icing you should put on top!)
This is probably my favorite banana bread recipe. I substituted 1/2 cup hone for the sugar and added a tsp vanilla and it was splendidly delicious! Thank you so much for the recipe and for a great way to redeem the discard. Love it!
Can I use discard straight from the fridge if I dont have time to use it straight away?
yes, absolutely!
I have enjoyed this recipe more than once! FYI Typo in “Prepare this pan {my} greasing…”
oh thank you denise! I’ll fix that! 🙂
Love this recipe. Already did this twice! I added dark choco chips because my husband likes chocolates 🙂
I just tried this with chocolate chips too! Glad you enjoyed it 🙂