Carla Makes Banana Bread

[Man] Action. [laughs]

[laughs] Uh, okay...

Sorry, I lost my train of thought.

Bananas.

[upbeat jazz music]

Okay guys, not only is this BA's best banana bread,

this is one of the BA's bests

that I've made the mosts times.

I have made this recipe, for this banana bread,

dozens, hundreds, let's just say hundreds of times.

It always comes out perfectly,

it always makes me very happy.

I've never made it here in the test kitchen though,

so it's all gonna be, like, different.

First things first, the time that you make banana bread

is when you have bananas that look like this,

and the people that you live with are like, ew, disgusting,

why are there brown spots all over my bananas.

They're actually very sweet when they get to this stage.

The starches change and they're not...

They get more pudding-like.

That's really the first thing,

that is the first step is like, you want overripe bananas.

If they're not overripe, your banana bread

will lack moisture, it will also lack sweetness,

it will last banana-ness,

and the whole point is the bananas.

Okay, next thing, before you start getting into your mixing,

'cause everything goes pretty quickly, prep the pan.

I have to say the metal is a great choice,

because it conducts heat even better than glass,

so I think we're gonna get beautiful browning

on the banana bread, and that's a lot of Bs.

So before I put any batter

in my burnished metal banana bread pan...

All right, light coating...

Lightly coating my arm, lightly coating the floor.

So then the recipe says to put the parchment paper,

which we obviously tore to fit with a long overhang,

or a generous overhang on the long sides,

which is these sides right here,

and that is for making... [laughs]

Banana hammock is different,

I know that that has another meaning, but later,

we will make a banana bread hammock through our lifters.

What is that called when you have to be taken off the field,

and they come and they get you...

[Man] Stretcher?

On a stretcher.

[Man 2] A stretcher, yes.

It's like a stretcher, or a banana bread gurney,

or a banana hammock.

Maybe a bounteous border for my banana bread.

But yes, this will help with the lifting

that has to happen later.

Sorry, backing up, another thing

that you wanna do before you do anything

is take some butter out of the fridge,

because it needs to be softened.

The reason for softening butter

is so that it whips with the sugar in the right way.

So actually, the sugar and the butter together

make a whole cutting motion,

the butter is getting cut through

with the little tiny razors of the sugar,

and that actually incorporates a lot of air into the butter.

So when you press into the butter,

your finger should make an impression, and it does.

This is pulling back, and I'm getting a little peak,

which is...

We're right on the edge.

So if you push in, and your finger makes an impression

that stays there, but it doesn't, like,

smush everything out, you have softened butter.

Have I made this with half all-purpose, half whole wheat?

Yes, I have.

You may do that, you will not get the same rise.

A little bit of kosher salt and baking soda.

Okay, whisk together all-purpose flour,

salt, baking soda, for the sour,

and that just gets set aside.

So softened butter, half a stick, dark brown sugar.

Have I used light brown sugar at home in a pinch?

Yes, I have.

What you miss out on is a little bit of that darker...

Molasses richness of the dark brown sugar.

Totally fine.

We're using plain yogurt.

You can use mascarpone, which is how the recipe is written.

You could use sour cream.

These are all good alts.

I'm gonna beat this energetically, butter and sugar.

And like I said before, the little crystals

of the sugar are being lashed about

through this beating action, so that's why the recipe

says to do this for four minutes,

which seems like an insane amount of time.

It's actually the perfect amount of time

to mash your bananas, so just be cool about it.

Actually set a timer, because people don't think

that four minutes is real,

but this is a really important part

of getting the nice height on the banana bread.

So the times that I've made this at home

and I didn't get a great rise, two reasons:

Baking soda could have been a little too old,

or I was a little too impatient with the whipping,

which is a thing that happens.

So I'm real excited, I don't have a potato masher at home,

I only have forks, so I'm very excited about this tool,

which is the perfect tool.

The other thing that happens when you mash bananas

is they kinda go from...

Matte, using that word again...

But it's not like bananas are juicy,

but when you mash them well enough,

they get really shiny and softened,

and you wanna get to that point.

You don't have to go crazy smooth on this.

There can be pieces of banana.

All right, so those are ready now.

So when we were working on the development

for BA's best banana bread, first we started

with what we always start with with BA's best,

which is, what is whatever recipe we have to make?

What is banana bread?

And then everybody goes through

what banana bread is to them.

The banana bread to me was a recipe

from Fannie Farmer's baking book

that my mom made my whole life growing up.

It did not have nuts in it,

and it did not have raisins in it,

and it didn't have an icing or anything like that.

It was just very tall, and very moist, and very delicious.

Moist is a word that a lot of people have a problem with,

but it is a word that's important with banana bread.

Hold on, I wanna scrape down my sides,

'cause I feel like we're getting close.

[Man] About 30 seconds.

Yeah, it's very aerated, you can see

that it changed so much in color,

and it also gained volume, right?

So that's how you know there's air in there,

that's what that space is.

All right, this is looking really lovely,

and nice and light, and creamy.

There's a little bit, you can see there's a little bit

of graininess, don't worry about it.

Two large eggs are gonna go in one at a time.

True story.

Second egg.

Bingo-bango.

Wow, she looks broken.

It's gonna be fine, this has happened to me many times.

So what is happening is the...

It could be a little bit of the temperature change too

between the eggs being a little bit colder

than the butter mixture was, and I think it caused

some of the fat to bead up,

and we also added a lot of liquid,

which is kind of just doing its own thing in that mixture.

But this is...

Trust I've made this many times

and the same thing sometimes happens,

and then it's all fine.

Yeah, you gotta lower your speed,

unless you don't mind a ton of flour

kind of kicking back into your face.

The other thing, I don't have one of those flour slides,

but this is always a moment when the roundness of the bowl

and the roundness of this bowl, with the thing,

and then I get a lot of flour on the surface of my counter.

I'll try to gather it in the middle.

And then I don't wanna over-mix at this point,

because once...

See, now it's all creamy and beautiful emulsion.

We made our batter, and it looks amazing.

I don't wanna over-mix here, because once you have liquid

and flour coming together, you have created gluten,

and we don't want a tough banana bread,

we want like a deliciously tender...

Okay, and now the bananas go in.

So if you were doing those extras,

you would do it at the last stage.

The walnuts, the pecans.

Banana peanut, I mean, why not?

All right, this looks gorge.

Batter's goin' in.

Ever since I wrote my book,

I've been thinking about this a ton.

Basically everything I know about anything about cooking,

I learned from somebody else.

And then even the things that you think you came up with

on your own, then you tell somebody about it,

and they're like, oh yeah, I do that.

So it does not surprise me...

Obviously, that there's somethin' goin' on here

that I learned from someone, I just wish I could remember

who it was so I could give them credit.

It was me.

[Carla] [laughs] Was it?

It was definitely me.

Okay, Brad taught me this thing,

and you can do this with any...

Loaf cake, pound cake, any kind of thing like that,

is just to give it a little crispy topper,

like a little added crunch, I take Sugar in the Raw, or...

You could even use granulated sugar,

and sprinkle that over the top of the cake,

and then when it bakes, you just get a little bit of a...

Texture differential, and it looks a little bit sparkly,

and it's a little bit crunchy.

Sometimes I add a little bit of flaky salt too,

if I'm feeling very sassy.

It is an adaptation with respect to the original,

but I just really like what happens when it bakes.

You'll see, if you don't do it,

it's totally fine, it's gonna be amazing.

All right, now it's going in the oven,

which is set to a predetermined temperature

that I can't remember.

[Man] 350.

350. [laughs]

[Man] For 60 to 65 minutes.

I like to go sideways, 'cause I feel like the heat

is more even across than if you go the long way

and the oven is cooler in the front and hotter in the back.

It has been 60 to 65 minutes.

[loud boom]

The time has come to banana hammock

this banana bread the hell outta this pan.

The time has come to airlift this banana bread

right outta the pan.

But look how beautiful, before we do that,

all of those little sparkles, and the little crunchles.

And then these cracks are normal,

so if your banana bread cracks, it's totally fine.

The reason that it cracked is because it rose,

and then it falls back down.

So as it rises, it sort of pulls the batter apart,

and that creates a little seam,

and then as it falls back down,

it settles back into place.

So that's why it has a crack.

It's just all part of the natural leavening.

And then we have our beautiful lifter.

So if you didn't have the parchment,

which speaking from experience, sometimes happens,

while it's still warm, you should just cut

around the outside of the bread, let it cool.

This cools in the pan for a whole hour,

and then you're just gonna invert it onto your hand,

and then back onto the board.

But we did have parchment,

'cause we're in the test kitchen, we have everything.

It looks really gorgeous, it's perfect,

it's perfectly risen, and really nice browning.

Mine doesn't get this brown in the glass pan,

so note to the wiser, if that's how that expression goes,

a metal pan will give you even better browning.

So then in my house, the first slice is...

It's on a little bit of an angle, you know?

So the first slice is all about tidying up the edge.

Also known as a Scooby snack, that is for the cook.

But it's really gorgeous, it's very...

It's very tight-crumb, you can see all those threads

of the banana itself, that darker brown

is the banana fiber, I guess,

and then the top piece is the best.

It's like a muffin top.

I've never had it cold, because I always can't wait

until it cools down, so my first slice is usually warm.

But yeah, don't cut your banana bread too thinly,

because then it will crumble.

I like a nice thick slice of banana bread.

It's just perfect, it's the perfect shape.

Everything about it's perfect.

Super moist, all the way cooked through.

One of the things that we had to troubleshoot

when we were working on the banana bread recipe,

you know how sometimes with some banana breads

after you cook it, it has this kind of rubbery,

under-baked, like, wet sand across the bottom?

That was a thing, it's about moisture content,

and about leavener, and about temperature in the pan

and the oven, and we totally figured it out,

because there's none of that here,

and it's really evenly firm top to bottom.

It's perfect, it's BA's best.

This is the only banana bread.

We have softened butter, also great with cream cheese.

And day after, I highly recommend popping this

in the toaster, on like a low toast setting.

Warm it up, crispen it up,

and then your butter will melt in,

or your cream cheese will soften.

Everything sweet should have something a little bit salty,

because life isn't just sweetness, you know what I mean?

Leone, are you a banana bread, lover of the banana?

I am.

[Carla] Are you?

Yeah, but I gotta ask before I look or...

Nuts or no nuts?

No nuts, how do you feel about that?

Okay, rock and roll, proceed.

[laughing]

So this is a nice slice with butter and salt,

but if you would like it plain Jane, I could--

Toasted?

Fix that up for you.

We were talking about toast--

In cast iron?

[laughing]

Delicious though.

[Brad] Delicious banana bread.

So moist.

Very moist, great flavor.

[Carla] Very banana-y.

Which I like.

[Carla] Not too sweet.

No, this is very nice, and I'm kinda picky

with my banana bread.

I am too, and this one--

Not too sweet.

Yeah, and this one's ruined me for all others.

It only has brown sugar.

It's delicious.

So it doesn't go too, like, crazy cake.

But basically, it's cake.

Basically.

I mean when you get right down to it.

Ooh, that little bit of salt.

Do you know people who don't like bananas?

Are you familiar with this group of people?

Yeah, probably Rapo.

He hates them.

I don't think Morocco likes them either.

He doesn't, he hates them.

And you know who else hates bananas?

Martha Stewart hates bananas.

Really?

Yeah, she hates them.

Gaby!

That was great.

[Man] Hey Gaby!

Do you like bananas?

Banana bread is one of my all-time favorites.

I do like nuts on it.

You do the nuts?

Yes.

We just were talking about the nuts.

It's sometimes, like, optional.

Yeah.

So, like I...

[Carla] What kind of nut?

I like walnuts, or, like, pecans.

Interesting, so you don't make the BA's best banana bread.

No, but I'm gonna start making it.

Yeah you are.

We used to have bananas in the kitchen, but then...

Yeah, I stopped ordering them.

They got outlawed by Gaby,

because they would go overripe, right?

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

So do you ever freeze them?

It's good, isn't it?

I do.

Do you use them frozen here?

[Carla] No, they were fresh.

I use them frozen.

It's great when they're...

The ones I had at home were practically liquified.

Oh, my god, it's so good.

People don't like bananas, though.

I heard that.

Yeah, people have very strong anti-banana feelings.

I don't like those people.

I know, but Chris Morocco's one of them.

Oh, really?

[Carla] The man hates bananas.

I forgot about that, yes.

And then one time he had to do a, like, yo-nana recipe,

you know, where you take the frozen banana

and try to make, like, ice cream out of it?

Yeah.

He almost went insane,

it was like the worst week of his life.

I have a theory that people that have reactions like that

with bananas, must be like, probably when they were little--

[Carla] That's what Brad said.

Either they have like green, or too much--

[Carla] Exactly.

Or too many, or...

Bad experiences with bananas.

[Carla] Texture.

I can eat them if they're green,

and I can eat them if they're overripe.

We love bananas.

Yes, we're bananas for bananas.

[laughing]

Thank you, I gotta go find Andy.

Okay, great.

He's hiding somewhere.

Cool.

[Gaby] Thank you!

Bananas for bananas, you heard it here first, folks.

And if you've been making other banana breads,

you've been doing it wrong.

That's all there is to say.

Unless Tommy wants me to say something else.

[laughing]

[Tommy] That's all there is to say.