On Banana Bread
A love letter to the squishy parts
As fall and winter spices re-grace kitchen counters, my craving for something warm, doughy, and sweet is unrelenting. The sublime draw of bread, in particular, is so powerful that I feel soothed at the very thought, as if it were the balm that cools the burn summer left in its wake.
The season has officially changed, and the air has become a crisp pinch on my cheeks. And as much as I adore apple and pumpkin, there is different comfort, of the fruit variety, that I seek.
The process of making banana bread makes me feel like I’m a child again, and that’s why I want to make it often. Even in the verve of summer. The act of pulverizing the spotty fruit into a glistening mush is not unlike pressing the pads of my fingers into the fluorescent glob of Silly Putty or stretching a ball of pizza dough at Bertucci's until it crumbles — both activities I was intimate with as a child. I relish this step in the recipe, sliding the caked chunks of banana off my fork with my fingers and then licking each one. In the same spirit, I impatiently, and recklessly, cut a steaming slice after it ascends from the oven.
It was June when I made the loaf that crystallized these thoughts, which is my favorite month of the year. People and weather were warming in preparation for vacation; anticipation of relaxation saturate the already thick, humid air. Summer produce began to speckle plates — peaches here, corn there. At my mother’s house in Texas, her fridge contained stacks of blueberry containers. I dropped a few into my mouth and to no surprise, a candy-adjacent sweetness outflowed from the pop of its skin. Morsels this pleasurable are ones that I’ll happily wait all year long for.
When my eyes found the countertop and saw a bunch of bananas just beginning to bruise, I felt the frantic urge to relieve them. In not doing so, I was complicit in what I couldn’t help consider their pain. Perhaps I was projecting. They sat waiting, each moment of neglect leaving another discolored mark on their otherwise perfect, opaque skin. I had always admired their pigment, as if a fruit born from the kiss of a canary. At last, it became unbearable for me to witness.
My urge pulled me back to the fridge to grab an entire container of those darling berries. Mixing flour, eggs, maple syrup, vanilla extract, baking powder, cinnamon, and sea salt in a bowl, I then liberally cast the navy marble-sized fruit into the batter, transferred the spotted yellow goop into the loaf pan, and set it in the oven.
As it baked, I contemplated how I never liked chocolate in my banana bread. The crumble topping or translucent glaze similar to what you might find on a coffee cake never felt right to me either. Sugary embellishments made it feel like it was trying to be something it’s not, like a cake. To me, the humble banana bread is an unshaken and reliable pillar of the snack (or breakfast) variety. I would not be so unkind to my loaf as to put it in a category that didn’t effectively recognize and celebrate its merits — being, the pockets of soft banana embedded in the walls of a bread so generous, so yielding, you can’t help but release yourself into it. Of course, considering how posh it feels to say “I eat cake for breakfast,” while I may disagree, I respect those who favor such a life.
Even still, consider me a purist. I really want the fruit alone to sparkle in this bread. That’s what makes a bake remarkable in my eyes. My mother likes nuts in her sweets, so walnuts adorned the fruity loaves of my youth, even if I felt they dulled its shine. When I’m seeking something comforting and forgiving of mistakes — which is precisely when I (and many others) turn to banana bread — what I’m really seeking is simplicity.
This simplicity, in addition to banana bread’s nostalgia and practical applications, is what first made it meaningful to me as I began to bake. When I started mashing the tropical fruit, it unlocked what I can only describe as a sense of whimsy. The same feeling as when I’m on a swing or caught in the rain without an umbrella. I pranced around the kitchen with both the focus and fearless impulse of a child. These feelings are seldom seen in the throes of my 9-5 job and I’m sad to say that sometimes, I forget they exist altogether. Those are the days I need banana bread the most.
I watch a fresh batch and wonder balloons inside me like the batter in the pan, my lungs brimming with the hot scent of starch. I am silly. I am curious. I am feeling fully, because I am baking for myself — and my younger self too. She was one who easily delighted, constantly questioned, and shed all expectations to be any other way than she authentically is. I felt her sitting with me as I peeled each banana for that batch, and as I looked at their bruised bits and suddenly saw the goodness in them. That was always in them.
Does the very act of neglect define banana bread?
Bananas produce a large amount of ethylene gas, which is considered an aging hormone. While a naturally occurring gas that serves to ripen the fruit, its release is accelerated when the fruit is bruised or injured. As follows, a bruised banana will rot faster than an unbruised banana. It is perfectly logical, then, that we gravitate toward the mistreated fruit, to take its diminishing life and create for it a new one. From its bruises, the fruit gains a new skin, a new purpose, when baked in our aluminum pans.
Banana bread simply wouldn’t be, if not for its bruises. Those squishy parts are what facilitated its transformation — into what you bake for friends when you need to stretch your groceries, your mom when you want to share your learnings with her, your new neighbors to repay their kindness, or yourself when you crave the soul-softening reminder of the kind of love to give your own bruises.
As my knife tip grazes the loaf and it tenderly gives under the weight of my hand, I feel proud to welcome it into the world. It’s a confection created not only reduce food waste and save money, but also to echo back to the skin, the purpose, that we each bring forth as a result of the bruises and transformations of our own. How have I been neglected? Mistreated? Transformed?
Starting with ourselves, I can venture that perhaps this is also what the world needs: the all-forgiving embrace that a warm slice of banana bread gives.
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