i have been tryin to make a new starter since my old one died on my and when my starter was still in the growing stage i added a bit of sugar to "lift" i up a bit and well now it is quite active and doubles in about 8 hours and is less than a week and a half old. i havent baked with it yet but the day after i added the sugar it started to smell like bananas! sincei have a interest in homebrew beers and i know that this is a character appropriate for the beer style hefewiezen, which has some clovy and banana notes in it. also since my starter is a whole wheat starter at 100% hydration i think maybe that the same strain of yeast the resides in the hefe jumped into my starer from the sugar and gave me some banana? has anyone encountered this before? if so how did you deal/fix it or will it be fine?

Hello everyone! As you can probably tell, this is my first post here, so Ill try to give as much information as I can so that you guys are better able to potentially help me out.

I got into baking last year, nothing fancy. Unfortunately, soon after I had to move, and other life stuff got in the way of me baking bread again. Well, now it seems I have a sweetheart who really loves bread, but has a pretty severe egg allergy, and while I want to bake for her, I also really like adding in eggs. This is further complicated by the fact that, during the move, I lost all my handmade bread recipes, so I have to go by memory.

Anyway, I've done a bit of research into egg substitutes, but I havent really done enough cooking to know which option is best. I know that bananas are a good substitute, but I dont know how much baking soda to add in to get the extra rise, and I've heard that oil is a good flavor substitute, but I was never really into cooking, so I dunno how much or even which oil to use.

I cut back how much sugar I'd normally use(I typically add in 1/4 c of honey) to avoid making it too sweet, but because of that, I'm also using storebought yeast instead of a starter to get a stronger rise. Anyway, heres the recipe(I think I remembered it correctly) that I'll try to use.

4c bread flour
1 package yeast
1 t salt
1 banana
1/4 c sugar
baking soda?

I know this seems like a simple bread, but I want to start easy and work this substitution thing into other breads. Again, I still have no idea how much baking soda to use. If anyone has any assistance or advice they'd be able to give me, it'd be much appreciated.

Originally, this was a comment in the thread:Levain as Desert

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/20693/culturing-growing-and-baking-range-wild-yeasts

However, I now find that I cannot find such "comments" very easily, and I just spent a too much time finding this, and another "comment", both of which should have been done as a blog, if for no other reason than to be able to reference them, when needed.

=== The original follows with no chages for the previous  entry. ===110423

On a daily basis, I have my levain discard as a Desert, and love it. As for how I made it originally, that is well explained in the Banana Saga: Link   http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/20460/

But, since then I have discovered it is very simple to make, and maintain, Banana Levain - assuming that you have a Cuisinart SmartStick 200-Watt Immersion Hand Blender, and if you do not then any blender could serve, but it will mean a bit more mess and work for you to do so.
 
Let us start from scratch: buy at lease 5 or 6 bananas. The best ones are those you would choose to eat, the poorest are those you would put in a banana quick bread. Take a one quart plastic  round container that has a lid, and then peel and slice the bananas crosswise, making round pieces, about 3 to 4 mm thick slices. Place the slices in the container, place the lid on it, and put the container with its sliced contents in the freezer or ice compartment until frozen solid - I do it for 24 hours. Next, remove the container from the freezer and place in the fridge to thaw, where they can remain until you want them. I usually let them have a couple of days, or longer to thaw slowly. They can remain thus for an extended period until you need to use them for refreshing an existing levain, or creating a new one. Freezing them does nothing to the flavor, but it weakens, or destroys most of the cell walls and fibrous parts of the banana. When I need a fresh batch to use for refreshing the levain, I first need to puree the once frozen slices. I use the Cuisinart SmartStick to puree the thawed banana slices directly in their plastic container in less than a minutes.

That puree is a great treat all by itself. If the bananas were still frozen, it makes an ice cream of pure banana, as well. Of course, I prefer it as a levain with a snappy bite to it.

To start a pure banana levain, simply take a small amount - I use 25g - of the puree and add a 1/4 tsp of ANY yeast water, or liquid sourdough starter. I have a yogurt maker that came with 7, 5oz. glasses with individual plastic caps. I use one of these, and blend the "seed" into the puree using a small battery powered hand whisk.

The powered whisk came with two tips - a normal whisk and a small tip called a drink foam-maker, or "foamer". The end of the foam-maker came with a spring coiled on its loop. The spring can be removed. If left in place it catches small fibrous parts and can be a pain to clean. I prefer it without the coiled spring.

I use this battery powered hand mixer to blend the seed with the puree banana refresh for the levain to get a more uniform rise from the levain.

Once a smooth mix is obtained, I smack the bottom of the glass once or twice to more or less level the surface. Then I add a rubber band as a visual indicator of the starting level of the levain. Then snap the lid on the glass.

From time to time I check back to see the growth progress.

I was using 5g seed and 25g refreshment, but the banana levain can become feisty, and on one occasion, it rose over 5 fold and blew the lid off - ejecting banana levain in a mild mess. So, after that, I have limited the total amount to 25g (5g seed and 20g refreshment).

Currently, with an ambient temperature around 70ºF/21ºC, I find it has tripled (or better) overnight, and once again before I am ready to retire. So, when I check and find the glass rather full, I remove the cap and place a clean glass on the digital scale. Then I transfer a 5g seed from the finish batch into the new start of the next feeding.

Of course, once the 5g seed has been "planted" for the next cycle, the remaining 20g is now discarded into my oral compactor. (+^_^+).

And thus, I have come full cycle. I go to the fridge and get the container of banana puree and feed 20g of the puree as the refresh to the levain and another snack starts to grow.

Ron

Previous Blog:  http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/20032/1-little-2-little-3-little-chia-rye-loaves

Have your ever felt that the expression "Couldn't see the forest for the trees." applied to you?
I think that this may be a case where it really applied to me <Blush>

When I first read Shiao-Ping's blog on making a sourdough banana bread - Banana Pain au Levain (see link)
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/14432/banana-pain-au-levain
I thought what a great gift such loaves would make for some of my friends. It certain was different from the usual gift. But, by the time I had finished the article, I found I was a bit concerned over two things that the author had experienced; first the hydration surprises she had encountered, and secondly, what she said about the slowness of the rising:
"dough appeared very sluggish.  It was almost as if my starter was finding it tough adjusting to bananas, "

Well, I went off and pursued other interests. However, I found my thoughts kept coming back to bananas, and to those two points that Shiao-Ping had raised. Checking on Google quickly revealed that the amount of water in bananas was closer to 75% than the 65% which she had initially assumed - base upon pumpkin percentages. Returning to the original blog, I found two others had already reported somewhat similar findings. Well, good. Most likely that cleared up the hydration issues, but what about my second issue - the slow rise?

Did the wee yeasty beasties really have problems with the addition of bananas in their diet? The more I consider this, the more interesting that question became for me. If you think I get interested in odd subjects, that's okay, others have mentioned that before.

I have spent a great amount of time studying my sourdough cultures and I have a very well establish baseline data set on my primary White Levain, which data I often use for comparisons. Suppose I take seed from that levain and build a variant levain, a Banana Flour Sour, at the same test hydration level that I used in establishing my baseline reference plots. Yes, I decided that was a clean way to get an initial handle on this slow rising point.

A Comparison

So, I took a seed from my primary White Levain (WL) and did a build/refresh containing as much banana as could be used while still maintaining the 100%HL . Maintaining that hydration level was necessary to match the WL reference data. The table below provides details.

     Table 1. Compositional breakdown of the 200 gram batches used on Day 0 through Day 8 of Banana Flour Sour at 100%HL testing

As soon as the refresh was mixed, the 200g test batch was place within my homemade temperature controlled chamber. The TC was set to maintain 80ºF (26.6ºC) +- about 1ºF. The level of the top edge of the levain was then recorded, and for every 15 minutes thereafter until the peak of the rise had been reached/passed, ending the Growth Phase.

      Figure 1. Comparing Average Rise of my Reference White Levain with the same WL Seed and a 67% Banana Puree + 33% AP Flour Refresh.

Certainly, at first reading of the data, Shiao-Ping's observation that "dough appeared very sluggish" was validated in the rise-time difference between the reference Lag and Growth Phases and those of the test Banana Flour Sour (BFS) culture.

One could argue that a good portion of the BFS Lag Phase could be explained by a difference between the average starting temperatures of the two cultures at test start, and I fully agree. However, that would not explain the difference in the Growth Phase slopes.

The temperature difference, just mentioned, resulted as follows. Both the WL reference and the BFS started from seed stock consisting of 200g of culture, which had undergone refreshment 24 hours prior, had been monitored through rise until the peak (Stationary Phase) had been reached, and then been returned to the refrigeration. The difference occurs in the refreshment temperatures. The WL was fed room temperature AP Flour and room temperature water, whereas, the BFS was feed 33% room temperature AP Flour (APF), plus refrigeration temperature banana puree (B) for the remaining 67% of its refreshment. There is no question that this difference would result is a longer Lag Phase for the BFS build. Hindsight is usually 20-20. But, this was not intended as a NASA grant application, and sliding the BFS curve to the left 30 or 45 minutes would affect the elimination of the "sluggish" nature of the rise slope.

A Bit of Back-slopping

Alright, there appeared to be less than euphoria on the part of the culture's beasties to feed on fruit - banana - rather than grain - wheat flour. Now, was this just a "fact-of-life", or could the culture's behavior shift if it were played with. To me, it seemed that the final height of the Growth Phase indicated that the banana was being used as material to created the CO2 desired, just at a slower rate. I have read the sugar, like salt, slows the growth rate. Certainly there was a lot more sugar in the new refreshment than the old.

If I simply repeated taking 100g of WL seed stock and adding the same 33% APF and 67% B (banana = B) as the refreshment, reasonably, I could expect pretty much the same curve, and that wasn't very informative. Whereas, back-slopping introduced two opposing factors. First, by using a portion of the previous build to act as the seed for the next build I could expect a lowering in the vigor of the BFS culture if B wasn't a viable food, and alternatively, I could expect an adaptation to the use of the B as a major food source if some of the beasties could handle it better than others - sort of a survival of the banana eaters. If B was really not a food for all the beasties, then the BFS culture should go downhill even faster, since, for the next several refreshments, the total % of B in each build would be increasing - Day 0 had a seed that was a pure water/APF composition, to which the 33% APF and 67% B was fed. Day 1 would have a seed that was a 100g of the residual of Day 0, to which the 33% APF and 67% B would serve as its refresh. So, each day would shift to a slightly higher % of B, until it peaked at a level 67% B total.

It looked as if the BFS culture had to go downhill if B was a poor food source for the beasties, and, on the other hand if it were a population mix, then I should see preferential growth of the B-eaters and resulting improvement in the rise slopes of the tests. Or at least, that was how it seemed to me.

                        Figure 2. The Rise Plots for Day 0 and 8 Days of Back-slopping with a Banana Flour Sourdough Culture.

Now, if one takes the starting temperature handicap that was mention earlier into account, it would appear that the BFS Day 7 and 8 are essentially equal to the reference WL data. I thought that this made it reasonable to think of the culture as now being happy to fed on either and both flour &or banana. In fact, after nine days of taking readings every 15 minutes, I was very eager to do a bread baking test, although, the addition of the BFS "disposable" daily 100g of culture, mix in with some a couple of white levains and a rye made for interesting and great sourdough waffles, and let me note that the wee yeasty beasties did not get all of the banana sugars. There was a lot of B-sugar that went into my waffles, as well (º0º)

The Banana Flour Sour Bake

In my usual fashion, I made one batch of dough, 1285g and split it into three, 428g parts. It took me time to bake the 3 loaves, just over a period of a week, in fact. The first and third loaves were done in a Dutch oven, with only their internal moisture for the steam. The second loaf was with steam and on parchment paper on the oven stones, but the temperatures match those given below for the DO loaves.

The two done in Dutch oven had preheated DO to near 500ºF (260ºC) and dropped to 410ºF (210ºC) as soon as the loaf was in the DO. After 20 minutes, the lid was removed, loaf turned out and replaced in the oven directly on the stones. The temperature was set down to 350ºF (177ºC) for 10 minutes and then turned off totally, while the door was cracked about ¼ inch (6mm) and the loaf left in for 10 addition minutes. The instant internal temperatures were ~ 207ºF (97ºC).

                 Table 2. Formula for Banana Flour Sour 3 Loaf Bakes Total of Banana 9% [ 6% water, 3% solids ]

The White Levain, BFS Levain and water were combined. Then the 2 flours mixed in and covered for 20 minutes. Total turned out into large bowl where the salt was added and worked in with 30 S&F followed with 30 minutes rest and another 2 sets of 30 S&F. At that point it was a bit over 2 hours and the dough was divided into 3 parts of 428g each in their individual 1L/1Qt oiled and covered plastic containers and placed in fridge. One loaf was used the next morning. Shaped and given 5 hours rise time and baked in a DO. Treatment of the third loaf was about the same 6 days later. The other loaf was made 3 days later, but shaped and formed in cloth-lined, clay loaf form.

                                                           First Dutch Oven Boule from WL+BFS Levains.

                                                             First Dutch Oven Boule's Crumb.

                                                            Second Boule - Steam & Stone from WL+BFS Levains.

                                                           Second Boule's Crumb

                                              Third Loaf, A Dutch Oven Boule - A Small Amount of Chia on Top.

                                Third Loaf's Crumb.

Yes, But.....

Baking each of the loaves went well. The crumb was fine, crusts great. The taste fine, with a slightly different flavor. Ah, but I would really be stretching the facts to say that I could taste anything that I would consider a banana flavor ! Well, there was only about 9% banana total in the loaves, and 6% of that was water. I guessed I'd just expected to much after eating those waffles with their great banana flavor, and that flavor coming only from the discards of the levain builds, and also being mix with a lot of other sourdough discards in the same batter.

The way I figured it, Shiao-Ping's Banana-Pain-au-Levain had about 38% banana in it. So, did I really expect 9% to overpower my little loaves?

Alright, how could I really load in the banana and still use my new found banana loving culture. If I added more banana, the hydration level (HL) was going to have to go above 100%HL, and a total banana based levain would have 25% solids (let that equal "flour") and the remaining 75% of the banana was water. A 75:25 ratio, or just plain 300%HL -WOW !!!

           Table 3. Details of the Five Builds to Reach Maintenance Level Pure Banana Starter 300%HL

A series of five builds gave a progression of hydration levels, starting at 100%HL, then 233, 285, 297, 299 and finally got me to a maintenance level of a Pure Banana Levain with 300%HL. This Pure Banana Levian seemed more viscous than I had expected. It even tripled on a rise and did not collapse, as a 100%HL flour levain would do. I found I enjoyed eating the discards directly with a spoon. The taste is like banana with a touch of vodka added to it.

                   Table 3. Formula for Bread Using 49% Starter, where the Starter was Pure Banana Levain @ 300%HL

Of course, I made a new bread ASAP. The method was a close match to the one Shiao-Ping gives for her Banana-Pain-au-Levain. I calculated her loaf as having 38% banana (solids plus water), and this formula yields a loaf the is 49% banana (solids plus water).

The mixing, shaping and baking all went as expected.

                                                           The 49% Banana Loaf Made with Pure Banana Levain @ 300%HL

                                         The crumb of 49% Banana Loaf

It was unbelievable! There was no discernible banana flavor, as least none that I could detect. It was a fine loaf, tasted fine. It did stay moist longer than most sourdough loaves. The crumb and crust were certainly in an acceptable range and the flavor was a bit different, but more towards the taste of rye than anything else.

As must be evident by this point in my "banana saga", this whole banana thing was getting to me. So, what to do next. I already had worked out a formula that would use no additional water, other than that from bananas. It had a Baker's % of 81.5% banana, all of which was in the form of Pure Banana Levain #300%HL. But, I decided that until I had a better handle on where had all the flavor gone, I could see little point in proceeding. What had Shiao-Ping done that I was missing? Well, the best way to attempt an answer to that was to bake her loaf as given in her blog. Something I no doubt should have done in the beginning - a fact now not lost upon. :-(

      Shiao-Ping's Banana Pain au Levain Formula Recast with the Levain Build

          Repeat of Shiao-Ping's Banana Pain au Levain

          The crumb from the Repeat of Shiao-Ping's Banana Pain au Levain

Guess what.... No banana flavor that I could detect. I could not believe it. I followed the posted formula and methods as close as anyone could expect. I knew I was missing something, but WHAT !!!

Lacking any better idea, I went back to the original posting, intending to read ever word again. There it was - it hit me like one of the trees had fallen on me - in that forest I had never noticed for all of the trees... The second sentence - "... the bananas in my house have gone sesame (ie, growing freckles) ..." I have been using fresh bananas. Generally, they still even had some green at their stems.

Well, my next attempts will need to wait, until the bananas I have just purchased, have gone beyond sesame!

In my own very weak defense of missing the obvious, let me say that the only use I have ever made of bananas in baking had been in a 70 year old banana cookie recipe that I came across some time ago. In making those, I take fresh bananas, slice them into 1/4" thick rounds, and freeze them for a day, and then let them thaw in the fridge. They turn into a dark brown mush that a simple hand-held blender with single whisk-like blade can whip into a smooth mush. So, I carried this method over into this pursuit of the elusive (for me) banana flavored loaf.

It has actually been a worthwhile endeavor, I have new waffle alternatives, and a most unusual "Banana foaming levain desert" as a result, of my explorations. I also certainly have lots of new information to think about. There is one thing I am sure of, and that is that I will bake a banana flavored bread - no matter how long it takes.... LOL

RonRay

****************************************** Appended 101116 The Banana Saga Concluded長篇故事

Yesterday, the bananas had been aging for 2 weeks, since purchased. Even within the thin plastic grocery bag I could smell the strong banana scent fairly well. As I removed the plastic, two of the eight bananas fell off their common stem. They were “well passed ripe”. I made 484g of banana puree with them, and no water was required to make it, so there was 40g of water, that I was temped to drop from the formula for this batch of dough. I mentally chastised myself for that thought. I would make the closest match I could to the original Banana Pain au Levain in Shiao-Ping's blog. And that is exactly what I did.

     A Simple Restating of Shiao-Ping's Formula with the 75%HL Build Combined.

While I did stick to the formula values, and essentially the same procedures, I did differ in the baking method. Some of teketeke's experimenting with alternatives to Dutch Ovens had interested me (See link) http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/20460/banana-saga-%E9%95%B7%E7%AF%87%E6%95%85%E4%BA%8B#comment-143159 and other entries in the thread below. So, when I saw a sale on turkey baking pans / turkey ovens, I bought one.

I have a 2 quart cast iron Dutch Oven and an Emerilware Enameled Cast Iron 6-Quart Trinity Pot. The 2 quart is perfect for most of my boules, but the Emerilware 6-Quart is both too deep and too heavy for me to safely throw in and out of a screaming hot oven. Also, being as deep as it is, makes turning out a high hydration dough from a brotform into such a deep drop does too much damage to be practical. Lurking over Mini, Daisy and Akiko's posts gave me an idea, which I wanted to try and this 864g loaf, now rising in a brotform, was just the thing to try the idea out on. I cut the handle off of an old Teflon frying pan that was destine for recycling, so that it would fit within the turkey pan/oven. This would hold the loaf and there was room outside of it to add a small amount of boiling water just before closing the lid.

       Turkey Oven and Lid with Old Frying Pan - Less Handle Inside

       Risen Loaf in Brotform about to be placed into Handel-less Old Frying Pan

      Loaf in Frying Pan in Turkey Oven - Ready for about 90g of boiling water in Turkey Pan

      Finished Banana Bread Loaf

Crumb of Banana Bread Loaf

Ah, banana scent floating from the baking bread.... At last ;-) And old, old bananas was all it needed...

Crumb is rather moist, but very tasty. It was not as strong a banana flavor as I'd expected from the heavy scents that came off the puree and again during the mixing, rising or the baking, but it surely is enough, and would well and pleasantly do for now.  I found it a nice bread to add to the increasingly long bake list.  An a happy ending for the conclusion of my Banana Saga.

Ron

======== 101118 Note:

**********You might enjoy checking out the forum topic of Wild Yeast at:

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/20693/culturing-growing-and-baking-range-wild-yeasts

Ron 雷朗

Next Loaf Baking: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/20693/culturing-growing-and-baking-range-wild-yeasts#comment-143857

I had three very ripe bananas to use up so I was looking around for a banana bread recipe that did not call for a lot of sugar or butter. I found an amazing looking recipe on King Arthur Flour's website for Banana Pina Colada Muffins (http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/banana-pia-colada-muffins-recipe). These muffins were beautiful; banana batter studded with dried pineapple chunks, topped off with a delightful shredded coconut crown. My only problem was I didn't have any butter so I kept searching until I found a recipe for Island Banana Bread on Vegetarian Times website (http://www.vegetariantimes.com/recipes/9044?section=). This one is vegan but I decided to alter it to suit my tastes. The following recipe is a fusion of the two differen recipes into my own very own Island Banana Bread:

Ingredients

2 c. White Whole Wheat Flour

1/4 c. Soy Flour

2 tbsp. Dried Buttermilk Powder

1 tsp. Baking Powder

1 tsp. Baking Soda

1/2 tsp. Sea Salt

1/4 tsp. Nutmeg

1 c. Diced Dried Pineapple (or other dried fruit: dates, apricots, etc.)

1/2 c. Raisin Puree (or prune puree)

1 1/2 c. Mashed Ripe Bananas

1/2 c. Packed Brown Sugar

2 Eggs

1 tsp. Rum

3/4 c. Orange Juice

1/3 c. Shredded Coconut

I was inspired by a Banana bread featured on farine-mc.com (link: http://www.farine-mc.com/search/label/Banana). This lady makes loaves that are works of art!

This humble loaf is a single recipe of Rose Levy Beranbaum's Banana Feather Bread, and when I slashed the top I tried a slight, reversed S-curve - to see what might happen.
I thought the result looked kind of like a banana!

We are looking forward to toasting and tasting.

Regards,
breadsong

After the pear bread worked so well, I got it into my head to try some other fresh fruits in breads. I really like strawberries so they were the fruit that immediately came to mind, even if this isn't the best season for them (ones that are only a bit ripe actually work better for bread due to their crispness). Then when I thought of strawberries, bananas came to mind too, they make such a wonderful pair. So, banana puree providing hydration, and strawberry chunks in the dough. But it could really use a nut in it too, so I chose macadamias, the only nut that really felt to me like it went with the two fruits. I also took that inspiration a step further and added macadamia oil and butter to the dough. This bread is quite moist, and a bit heavy, though not in the stone in the stomach manner!

Strawberry Banana Macadamia Nut Sourdough

Makes: 2 medium, or 3 small loaves

Time: Day 1: Elaborate starter. Day 2: Mix final dough, fold dough and retard. Day 3: Shape, proof, and bake. If using commercial yeast, you can do this in 2 days. Day 1: Make preferment. Day 2: Mix final dough, fold and ferment, shape and proof, bake.

Ingredients:

Directions:

1. Elaborate your starter however you choose, but ending up with the same flour and water weights. (or make a commercial yeast preferment) Allow it to rise overnight.
2. The next day: Puree the bananas, dice the strawberries, and chop half of your macadamia nuts..
3. Stir together the flour and salt in a large bowl. Cream the starter or preferment with the water, macadamia butter, macadamia oil and banana puree. Pour the liquid ingredients into the dry, and mix until the dough forms a loose ball.
4. Let the dough sit for 20 minutes, they knead it very briefly to make sure everything is well incorporated. Flatten the dough out and spread as much of the strawberries and macadamia nuts. Fold the dough over itself, give it a few kneading turns then add as much of the remaining strawberries and macadamias as possible, continue you've used all of them up. You will probably need to add a fair amount of flour during this step, the strawberries will be adding a lot of water to the dough.
5. Form the dough into a ball and put it in a covered and oiled bowl to ferment. Give the dough a stretch and fold at the first and second hour marks, immediately after the second fold make sure the dough is well covered and retard it overnight in the refrigerator.
6. The next day, gently remove the dough from the bowl and slowly degas it. Seperate the dough into two or three pieces, and shape them into whatever shape you are planning on making, this dough works well as boules.
7. Place the shaped loaves in a couche, towel lined bowl, or brotforms to proof. The dough is a bit too slack to rise well on just a baking sheet.
8. When the loaves are proofed, preheat the oven to 500° with a baking stone (and a cloche bell if you plan to use one, or a cast iron pan for steaming) on the middle shelf. Just before the loaves go in the oven, give them a quick scoring.
9. Place loaves in the oven, reduce to 450, and bake for 15 minutes covered if using a cloche (if not using a cloche, pour 1/2 to 1 cup of almost boiling water into the cast iron pan when you put the loaves in the oven), then rotate the loaves 180° and continue baking for another 10-20 minutes. When the loaves are finished, remove from the oven to cooling rack and cool at least one hour before slicing.

One thing I was surprised about with this bread is the strength of the macadamia flavor. I was hoping for a bit more strawberry and banana flavor, but as it is they provided a nice backdrop for the macadamia flavor that infuses even parts of the bread with no nut pieces in it. So, it wasn't exactly what I set out to create, but it ended up being delicious in an entirely different way. As a note, if you don't have macadamia nut butter, you can probably make your own in a food processor, blender, magic bullet, etc. with nuts and just a little bit of oil. You can also substitute another oil for the macadamia oil, but it won't add quite the same flavor. And this is, of course, my weekly submission to YeastSpotting!

My sweet bread-loving best friend suffered a heart attack last year, and since then I've been searching for and experimenting with lower-fat, healthy versions of his favourite recipes.  This incredibly easy moist, delicious loaf, adapted from Bonnie Stern's Best of HeartSmart Cooking is not only lower in fat, but what fat it contains is mono or polyunsaturated, which boosts HDL (good) cholesterol.