I love this Banana Sandwich Bread recipe because it’s like a cross between traditional banana bread (quick bread, sweet bread) and traditional sandwich bread (yeast bread, sliced bread). Using a ripe banana for sweetness not only drives up the moisture but increases the nutritional value (which won’t matter one bit to the child who digs into the upgraded PB and J you just served and can’t remember ever having anything so wonderful).
Check below the recipe for some tips and ideas for making this bread.
This recipe was adapted from The Bread Lover’s Bread Machine Cookbook, page 59
Ingredients
- 1 1/3 cups water warm
- 1 1/2 Tbsp coconut oil melted
- 1 banana mashed
- 4 cups 100% whole wheat flour
- 1/3 cup buttermilk powder
- 2 Tbsp vital wheat gluten
- 2 tsp salt
- 2 3/4 tsp yeast
Instructions
- Add warm water, melted coconut oil, and mashed banana to the bowl of a stand mixer.
- Add flour, buttermilk powder, gluten, and salt.
- Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients. Add yeast to the well. (Make sure the yeast doesn't touch the salt.)
- Fit mixer with dough hook. Mix on speed 1 5-8 minutes or until a dough ball forms and cleans the sides of the bowl.
- Spray loaf pan with cooking spray. Add dough to loaf pan and shape into a loafy shape. Cover with a clean kitchen towel and let rise 1-2 hours or until doubled in bulk.
- Preheat oven to 400. Bake 25-30 min or until crust is browned and loaf sounds hollow when tapped. Remove from oven. Remove loaf from pan and place on a cooling rack. Cool completely. Slice and freeze, or slice and serve.
Pin this healthy banana sandwich bread recipe to your favorite boards. Use the pin button on the image below (hover to see it on desktop). This would go great on clean eating boards, bread boards (pun intended), lunch boards, sandwich boards, and more.
Allow time for this bread to rise. The whole grains will slow the rise time, so be patient and let it bulk up. (It could take up to 2 hours.) And, the riper the banana the better here. Look for a banana with “brown sugar spots” on the peel.
Since homemade bread doesn’t have preservatives, it won’t stay fresh long. I suggest baking, cooling, slicing, and freezing it. It will last much longer in the freezer and if it’s pre-sliced you can grab as many slices as you want at a time without thawing the whole loaf.
This bread would be amazing for french toast or even regular toast, but my hands-down favorite way to use this bread is in a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. If you want to cut it into fourths and arrange the quarters like butterfly wings, with celery as the butterfly body, be my guest, but I promise this sandwich is good enough without the gimmicks.
Comments (2)
What do you mean “one each” bananas? And won’t the yeast have to touch the salt at some point when it’s mixed? 😉 thank you!
Hi Erin,
It just means “1 banana”. I think the “each”, in this case, confused the website ingredients system and made it plural. I went ahead and took that out so it should just say “1 banana” now.
As far as the yeast and salt, they do touch eventually in the mix, but if you have a lot of salt (or sugar) in direct contact with a bunch of yeast it can impair the yeast’s ability to do its job. This link explains more: https://www.delcofoods.com/our-products/tips/yeast-keep-salt-sugar-away-2/
Ryan