Banana Bread from Crust and Crumb
Banana Bread
In addition to all the yeast breads, including sourdoughs, Peter Reinhart has also provided us with recipes for other types of baked goods. In Crust&Crumb, he has a Banana Bread recipe I tried for the first time yesterday.
Reinhart gives two methods of mixing: one if you use butter as the fat("Creaming method"), the other if you use oil ("Batter method"). I had an attack of self-restraint and used oil. I also cut down the sugar by about 1/3, because most recipes call for more sugar than I like, and cut down the walnuts by 1/3, because I didn't have as much walnuts as I thought I did. Reinhart does not call for toasting the nuts, but I did - 5 minutes at 350F.
Next time, I am going to try using less oil (Canola).
The past and future tweaks aside, this made a very nice quick bread. It is very moist and tastes delicious.
David
Comments
Like everything you make it looks sooo good.
My daughter brought back three bottles of different oils from France. One is walnut oil and I'm wondering if I could put some in a banana bread in place of some of the oil or butter. I don't know what to do with any of the oils but I've been trying to think of something. I have no idea how much I could use in a recipe or how these oils work. Guess I'll just have to give it a try using maybe 2 TBLS. for a recipe. Any thoughts? weavershouse
As far as I know, nut oils are used primarily in salad dressings and, sometimes, as a finishing oil for a sauce - like truffle oil or seseme oil. I have no idea how they would work in baking, but why don't you try and let us all know?
If you do substitute it, I imagine it would be ounce for ounce for whatever fat the recipe specifies.
A search on "walnut oil" on epicurious.com yeilded 332 hits.
http://www.epicurious.com/tools/searchresults?search=walnut+oil
David