Interior of a Working Kitchen: Bread Machine Makes Banana Nut Bread (You Don’t Need One).

Helping People Cook (nearly) Everyday: Interior of a Working Kitchen

Wednesday: Ingredients I needed to use: Burnt nuts, darkening bananas, and sour cream.

This loaf of Banana Nut Bread is made with a bread machine. It can be easily made without one as well.

A bread machine is one of many unnecessary kitchen appliances that sits enticingly at Target. It also takes up space in many a kitchen, unused, with its owner feeling slightly guilty at the expensive purchase. 

It's a machine that allows you to throw in a bunch of ingredients, then after a few hours, a loaf of bread in a metal bucket slides out. It takes about three hours longer than driving to the supermarket and buying some bread.

This I know.

So the machine isn't here to help anyone learn to cook or start cooking regularly. It's here because I bought one for US$10 at a consignment/donation store for retirees who are downsizing just as I started this blog.

But for today, I needed to use up my slowly darkening bananas, a container of sour cream (leftover from having burritos) and the slightly burnt nuts. Banana nut bread seemed the most intuitive, and I came across a recipe that needed sour cream as well. Perfecto. 

I didn't have vegetable oil so decided avocado and canola mix was thin enough and tasteless to be a substitute. Probably could use a mild olive oil as well. I didn't end up putting the burnt nuts in, it wasn't worth ruining a whole loaf of bread because I was too cheap to use 1/3 cup of fresh pecans. I threw in a handful of granola, with a few raisins, that my son left in a bowl when he snacked. 

The recipe suggested a ratio of 2/3 cup of sugar with 1 and a half cup of flour which was far too much, so the sugar was halved. It still turned out still a little on the sweet side. If I make it again, I will half that again. 

But over all I had a moist, not dense, banana nut bread with none of the washing. No flour to wipe up, no pan to scrub, no bits of dough cemented on a mixing bowl and wooden spoon that I left too long before washing. I really was surprised how much easier it was to make banana bread in the machine opposed to just in a pan. 

Here is the recipe I used:  http://www.food.com/recipe/banana-nut-bread-for-the-bread-machine-96521

It was moist, thick, had a nice ratio of nuts and bread. Worth trying. Reduce the sugar. 

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