Gold’s Banana Bread and Circumstance

Here is what I know about banana bread. It happens under two circumstances.

One is that you get a craving for it on a Tuesday and then wait for the bananas to become speckled and chestnut in spots.  Then you satisfy your needs on Friday. 

The other is that you buy more bananas than you, and anyone in close cohabitation, could humanly eat in a three or four day period.  The decreasingly yellow fruits make their presence known through aspirations of breakfasts gone by. And you must dispose of them.

The trash is not an option.  Banana bread happens when becoming wholly-rotten-to-the-point-of-disbandment is not an option.  Or when waiting is the only option.  It is a wonderful, strange thing that occurs when either too much or too little planning takes place. 

And thus, it is accessible to many types.  This is one of the reasons, I think, why it is so appealing.  It is likely the person who makes you banana bread is either a good planner or someone who often makes the best of a bad situation.  Both types are handy to have around.  Particularly with concurrent skills in the banana bread making department.

The last time I made a loaf was November, 2011.  I documented it on a trip with some friends to the mountains of New York.  (Banana bread is good on trips.)  A solid recipe for sure, but arguably a little too bedazzled when simplicity is what you require.  It also suffers from inaccessibility with the cardamom-haters that walk the earth.

Then, a few months ago, a classmate brought in two loaves of still-warm banana bread—one with chocolate chips—both served with honey butter. It was the best banana bread ever.  The recipe came from the back of a bag of Gold Medal flour. Which should be a lesson to all of us.

Perhaps we should pay more attention to our negligence and to the ordinary. After all, that’s the stuff really good banana bread is made of.

Gold’s Banana Bread

Adapted from the back of a Gold Medal Flour bag

Ingredients:

1¼ cups granulated sugar

½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened

2 eggs

1½ cups mashed very ripe bananas (3 or 4 whole)

½ cup buttermilk

1 tsp vanilla

2½ cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

½ tsp cinnamon

1 cup chopped walnuts

Instructions:

Set the oven to 350 degrees. Grease the bottom only of one 9 x 5-inch (or two 8 x 4-inch) loaf pan(s).

In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine the sugar and butter on medium-high speed until light and fluffy (about 2 minutes).  Add the eggs, bananas, buttermilk, and vanilla and mix on medium-high until fully combined and smooth. 

In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon.  With the mixer running on low, add the flour mixture in three swift additions.  Stir in the walnuts with a rubber spatula until just combined (make sure bits of flour are no longer visible).

Bake for 60 to 70 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted into the center.  (Start checking around 55 minutes with the two smaller loaves.) Cool 10 minutes on a wire rack then, with a knife, loosen the sides of the bread from the pan.  Let cool one hour before slicing.

Makes one 9 x 5 loaf or two 8 x 4 loaves

Listen to Your Pancakes.

Last Tuesday I finished my career as a part-time graduate student.  I sat around my professor’s dining room table for six with nine other people in sticky, humid air and listened to ethnobotanical presentations and ate wild green pie, filled with lamb’s-quarters and wood sorrel from the lawn outback.

At one point someone’s homemade kombucha exploded and my professor used white linen napkins that were once Julia Child’s to clean up the fermented tea.  Then we ate peanut cake with salted chocolate icing made using a family heirloom recipe born from life on a Mississippi legume farm.  I talked about the cultural thorniness of the black raspberry and of Dr. Oz and scientific hubris.

It was a very odd, very appropriate, ending to the past five years.  A time that has deeply tested the limits of my sanity, has limited my social capacities and back account, and has forever broadened my view of food and society.

I am grateful to have this perspective and am looking forward to reacquainting with my kitchen.  Most recently this has included pancakes.  The past few years have left me perpetually searching for recipes that incorporate spent sourdough starter and also for pancakes that puff up like the kind served by someone who calls everyone honey. 

My Life in Sourdough has that version.  The ingredient list is admittedly a bit limiting, as it requires you know someone who regularly maintains a starter.  My brother has killed at least three.  And I’m hoping these pancakes might motivate him to put an end to his microbial massacres once and for all.

If you regularly feed a starter, you are in luck.  This will aid in creating thick, fluffy saucer-sized shapes that take to maple syrup far better than any other breakfast food.  (Even better than the waffles of insane greatness.) I have made the recipe at least three times in the past month.  That alone should come through loud and clear.

Because if I have learned anything over the past five years, it’s that it is sometimes better to let the food do the talking.  As Mel Brooks once joked, listen to your broccoli, and your broccoli will tell you how to eat it.  Something tells me that pancakes can speak even louder.

Sourdough Blueberry Brown Butter Pancakes

Adapted from My Life in Sourdough

Ingredients:

½ to ¾ cup sourdough starter (not fed)

½ cup all-purpose flour

½ cup whole wheat flour

1 cup whole milk

1 tbsp sugar

1 egg

¼ tsp salt

½ tsp baking soda

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 tbsp butter

1 scant cup frozen or fresh blueberries

zest of one lemon (optional)

Instructions:

The night before

In a large bowl, mix the starter, flours, milk, and sugar until well combined; cover and place in the fridge overnight (ideally 10 to 20 hours ahead, see note below).

The day of

In a medium or large sauté pan, melt the butter over medium heat; continue to cook until it turns a light caramel and starts to smell nutty; set aside to cool slightly.  To the starter mixture, add the egg, salt, baking soda, and vanilla extract.  Slowly add in the melted butter and then fold in the blueberries and lemon zest (if using).

Wipe out the sauté pan to remove any dark bits and butter the pan again; set the heat to medium.  Scoop about 1/3 cup heaping batter into the pan and then cook until it starts to bubble and turn golden on the underside.  Flip and cook about 1 minute more or until cooked throughout.  Repeat with remaining batter, buttering the pan after every pancake.

Makes about six to eight 4 to 5-inch diameter pancakes

Notes:

-The whole wheat adds a nice nuttiness and I’d definitely encourage it.  The milk can be swapped depending on your preference.

-If the starter mixture rests in the fridge about 10 hours, it benefits from being left on the countertop an hour or two to let the microbes warm up; this helps the pancakes rise better.  The longer it is left in the fridge the less time it needs on the countertop.  (But this is a living product and may need some individual tweaking.)

Olive + Gourmando Brownies with Espresso Ganache Chips, Of Time and Chocolate

When someone suggests that you ought to go to graduate school, what they are really saying is that in two to five short years, you will arrive with a master’s degree wearing pants that have become hard to button, permanent under eye circles, and a new distain for structuralism. 

All for the cost of a down payment on a house.

I have worked as a dietitian for ten years and gastronomy graduate student for five.  Food has become a lens through which I view pretty much everything. 

I have examined French nationalism through wine and peered at fascism through a pasta noodle. Viewed the sensorial language of restaurant chefs using a twelve course tasting menu.  Analyzed normative gender identity in a professional kitchen. And theorized beer to be a fluid entity built by microbes and societal flux.

And I mention all this because I am tired.  I have one more class to go.  And have officially hit writer's block. 

It turns out the quintessential brownie can no longer be summed up so quickly.  That and I desperately need a vacation. So forgive me.

This recipe is a wonderful example of the complication that food often provides.  It is the best brownie recipe I have encountered.  And it comes from Canada. 

Specifically, from a bakery called Olive + Gourmando, which I visited a few years ago during a trip to Montreal.  It is the kind of shop that labels pastry baked in a muffin tin with a disclaimer that reads, “this is not a red velvet cupcake,” in typewriter font next to platters of chocolat belge biscuits and thick brownies. A place that can get away with holding its middle finger up high.

An unlikely source of such a treasured archetypal American dessert.  And yet, poetically appropriate.

These brownies are of the fudge-like persuasion.  They are unapologetically dense and deep, studded with homemade espresso ganache chips that shimmer like moonlight through the pines.  They call for advanced planning by a day or two and a shocking quantity of high quality chocolate. But if you are craving sensory overload, there is no better fix.

And if you want them, you had better get on it.  This is not the type of recipe built on hastiness. Like so many worthwhile things it requires an investment of time, and of chocolate.

Olive + Gourmando Brownies with Espresso Ganache Chips

Adapted from Dyan Solomon of Olive + Gourmando 

Ingredients:

for the espresso ganache chips

375 grams (about 13½ ounces) 70% chocolate

½ cup heavy cream

2 tbsp instant espresso powder

½ tsp cinnamon

for the brownie batter

3 sticks (1½ cups) butter, cubed

455 grams (about 16 ounces) 50% chocolate, cut into cubes ½ to 1-inch

6 eggs, room temperature

1½ cups sugar

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup all purpose flour

1½ tsp salt

Instructions:

for the espresso ganache chips:

These need to chill, so plan to make them a few hours ahead (or the day before).  Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.  Place a metal bowl over a pan of slowly simmering water about 1-inch deep.  Melt the 70% chocolate in the bowl, stirring regularly.  Meanwhile, in a small saucepan, warm the heavy cream and mix in espresso powder and cinnamon; stir to dissolve. 

Pour the heavy cream into the melted chocolate; stir rapidly to combine and pour on parchment paper, smoothing the chocolate out towards the pan edges.  Place in the fridge to cool.

for the brownies:

Set the oven to 350 degrees.  Grease two baking dishes with butter and cover with parchment paper—letting the paper sides hang over the dish (this will make it easier to remove the brownies). Grease the parchment paper with butter. (I used a 9 x 9 and a 6 x 12 pan: you may be able to get away with one large rectangular baking dish but it may alter the cooking time.)

Place the butter in a medium saucepan on medium heat to melt; add in the 50% chocolate and stir constantly; taking care not to let the chocolate burn.  When the chocolate has melted, remove from heat and set aside.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine eggs, sugar, and vanilla extract; beat until it turns a pale, frothy yellow (about 5 minutes). 

In a separate small bowl, sift together flour and salt.  Remove the ganache from the fridge and break up into bite-sized pieces.

Drizzle the melted chocolate into the egg mixture (the chocolate should be warm but not scalding hot); fold together. With the mixer on low, add the flour in three additions; remove the bowl from the stand.

Fold in the ganache chips and continue to fold until no flour remains, taking care not to over mix.

Pour the batter into prepared pans and bake for 35 to 45 minutes, or until the top looks set and starts to crack.  (Since the batter is so rich, it will be difficult to use a toothpick to test for doneness.) Let cool and then refrigerate overnight in the pan; this will aid in creating a fudge-like texture.

Makes about 25 brownies

Notes:

-You’ll want to use high quality chocolate, especially as it is such an integral part of the recipe, Callebaut or Valrhona are two options.