The Banana Bread Chronicles

Last weekend I was invited over to a friend’s house for a “Cheese Making and Bread Baking Party”. All of my friends in attendance are not gluten free and were planning on baking conventional breads. I, however, had to plan out what type of bread I would make and what flour it would require. I somehow managed to NEVER get to the store last week and ended up just bringing over my Pamela’s Baking & Pancake Mix. It wasn’t my best option, but I just rolled with it. On the back of the package there is a recipe for Banana Bread so I thought I’d give it a go. It was either that or sit around watching everyone else eat bread, which sounds like the worst idea ever. It seemed like a pretty simply recipe that didn’t require too much effort on my part. The recipe called for:

4 tablespoons butter, melted
1/2 cup sugar or honey
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup banana, mashed
1-3/4 cups Pamela's Baking & Pancake Mix
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

As I’m blending together the ingredients (slowly) and trying to unfreeze the bananas, I really just wanted to eat the raw dough. P.S. mashing frozen bananas is really hard. How do people resist eating the dough? Whenever I bake anything I swear I’ve lost half of my end product due to my prior consumption of raw dough. It’s so sugary and delicious…yum. I try not to though because I’ve grown up being lectured by mother about eating raw eggs and developing diseases (not even sure what those diseases are now).

I ended up baking it for over an hour because it wasn’t completely done yet when the recipe called for it to be taken out. When I took it out of the oven and let it cool it smelled so good. Rarely do I actually bake anything gluten free because I’m so busy, so when I do it’s a wonderful little treat that only I know the true value of. After letting it cool, I cut into it and was thoroughly disappointed. The bread was crumbly- so crumbly that the slice would split in half in my hand. It tasted just like good ol’ fashioned banana bread, but just didn’t quite make the cut for being stable. After having it for a few days, the bread has just become even more crumbly. I cut it into quarters to make sure that I don’t end up with crumbs all over my hands.

I’m not sure if it was the lack of Xanthan Gum in the recipe- the flour already contains it. I hope that Pamela’s can clue us into what exactly went wrong with this recipe as it’s one that they advertise on their product. I love utilizing their all purpose flour and just invested over $15 into a big bag of flour for my baking adventures.

My next mission is to find a better banana bread recipe and share it with followers. Please comment with any other experiences that you’ve had with on-package recipes or an AWESOME banana bread recipe.

(This recipe is accessible on http://www.pamelasproducts.com/recipe/Pamela39sBananaBread/275.aspx)