Brown Butter Banana Bread (Mix-in Ready!)

Banana bread often veers into two extremes: overly dry, or so moist you worry it’s underbaked. But this loaf just might be the goldilocks of banana bread, with the perfect balance of moisture and tender crumb and a nutty brown butter flavor that serves to enhance the caramel notes of the banana. A tiny bit of sour cream adds moisture and body and prevents the bread from being too dry or cakey. In other words, it’s just right.

Every baker should have a go-to classic banana bread recipe, even if it is only used as a foundation for countless mix-ins and variations. This recipe is exactly that: with a moist crumb and robust flavor it is more than satisfying on its own, but oh so easy to add mix-ins like chocolate chips or nuts to make your own perfect loaf (which is undoubtedly different than my perfect loaf or your aunt’s perfect loaf or… well, you get the idea).

My recipe archives have been missing a basic banana bread recipe for some time now (or as Taylor would say, plain a$$ banana bread). This brown butter banana bread is about as close to basic as you’re going to get (you’re welcome).

The key to this banana bread’s simple perfection is (obviously) the brown butter, which adds a rich and nutty and almost caramelized flavor that compliments the banana beautifully. It’s also well balanced, with enough sugar to keep it moist and tender (too little sugar = dry dry dry), and also a dollop of full fat sour cream that adds moisture and body (too little fat = even drier).

The sour cream is an addition inspired by my sour cream coffee cake and also sour cream chocolate cake; I figured, if it works that well for ultra-moist coffee cake and chocolate cake, it should work equally well for banana bread too! I first tested this theory in miniature in my banana bread muffins, and now it’s incorporated into my full size banana bread recipe as well.

The Internet™ has strong feelings on chocolate chips in banana bread, apparently, as does Taylor, who seemed personally offended that I had the audacity to bake a loaf of banana bread without chocolate. I even found him in the kitchen pressing mini chocolate chips into each piece like they were cloves on a holiday ham (cue eye roll).

If you—like Taylor—won’t accept anything short of a chocolate studded loaf for breakfast, I’ve got a few options for you in the archives, including this double chocolate banana bread (with cocoa powder AND chocolate chips), as well as a peanut butter chocolate chip banana bread, and even chocolate chip banana bread muffins. What I didn’t have was a basic banana bread recipe, which was my ultimate goal with this one.

Of course, you can certainly add mix-ins to this recipe, no matter if you are Team Chocolate Chip™ or Team Nuts™. But even without any mix-ins, it’s still a stellar pure and simple banana bread recipe that’s worthy of being called my “go-to” recipe from now on.

Mix it up.

I call this recipe mix-in ready since it’s written as a plain loaf without any added nuts, chips, dried fruit, etc etc. But that’s where your creativity comes in, and you can adapt this loaf in myriad different ways by just adding various mix-ins.

When adding mix-ins, you can safely add about 1 cup of total mix-ins (for example 1 cup chopped pecans, or 1/2 cup walnuts and 1/2 cup mini chocolate chips).

The only caveat to consider is if you are using the smaller of the two standard loaf pan sizes (8.5-by-4.5 inches, this is what mine is), you just want to be sure you don’t overfill the pan—it shouldn’t be more than 2/3 full. If that means you don’t quite scrape every bit of batter from the bowl, well, feel free to bake off a muffin or two, or just give yourself a generous lick of the bowl.

If you’re using a 9-by-5 inch pan, you should be good to go with the extra volume with no adjustments.

Want to make this recipe as muffins? Easy! Just drop 1/4 cup of batter into muffin cups and bake for about 18 to 20 minutes; you’ll get about 12 or 13 muffins from one batch.

I’ve been making a lot of brown butter recipes lately, if you haven’t noticed. Let’s just say I’m in my brown butter era. It’s such an easy and fun ingredient to bake with, as almost any recipe that calls for melted butter can easily be made with brown butter instead—it only adds 5 to 10 minutes of extra time and easily adds that much more flavor and then some.

Recipes that call for room temperature butter are a bit more involved to convert to brown butter, as you need to chill down the brown butter after making it until it re-solidifies.

But since banana bread is what’s known as a quick bread, which utilizes liquid fat such as melted butter or oil, the swap is super simple. And since there is still plenty of water in the banana itself as well as in the added sour cream, we don’t need to worry about the final result being too greasy (as is sometimes the case with brown butter cookies, which need a tiny splash of milk to bring the water level back to that of regular butter).

And did I mention it’s a quick bread? Which means it is, get this, quick. Even with the browning of the butter you can have the batter ready to go in the oven in 20 minutes or less, with just a whisk and/or spatula, no electric mixer needed.

Brown butter me up.

Brown butter is made by melting butter on the stovetop, and continuing to cook it until all the water content is gone (it will stop sputtering), and the milk solids separate out and fall to the bottom of the pan where they take on a lovely golden brown color. It’s these browned milk solids that are the source of the delicious nutty flavor in the brown butter (thank the Maillard reaction for that!)

If you want double-strength brown butter, add a tablespoon of dry milk powder to the saucepan while melting the butter. This essentially adds extra milk solids for browning, intensifying the flavor without increasing the amount of actual brown butter in the recipe.

Brown butter adds a complex depth of flavor with toasty, caramel notes that you just can’t get with plain melted butter.

I recommend using a light colored saucepan if possible, which makes it easier to see and monitor the color change. Sometimes the brown butter will get pretty foamy, which can make it hard to see the color. But the foam itself will start to take on a slightly brown tinge, that’s when you should take it off the heat and immediately transfer it to a heat-proof container so it doesn’t continue to cook (even stopping to take a couple pictures at this point in the process was enough to take my brown butter a shade or two too dark; I’d take it off the heat like 30 seconds sooner next time).

Ingredient Notes & Substitutions

Butter: I used European-style salted butter here (which I prefer when making brown butter), but you can use American-style if you like. If using unsalted butter, increase salt to 3/4 teaspoon.

If you’re really in a rush or prefer not to brown the butter (I’m sure you have your reasons), this recipe should work just fine with plain melted butter in the same quantity. You just won’t have quite as interesting a flavor in the final loaf.

Bananas: This recipe calls for 3 large-ish bananas. Every time I measure and weigh 3 bananas, I get a slightly different amount, but luckily this recipe is pretty flexible and should tolerate 1 to 1.5 cups of mashed bananas, or feel free to weigh it out if you want to match what I did exactly.

You want your bananas super ripe. More brown than yellow. If your bananas aren’t quite ripe enough, simply bake unpeeled bananas at 300ºF for 15 to 20 minutes or until the bananas are entirely brown and a little juicy. Let cool completely, then remove peels and proceed as instructed.

Brown sugar: using all brown sugar in this recipe (no white sugar) adds to the moisture and gives the bread a subtle molasses undertone that compliments the brown butter beautifully.

Sour cream: I recommend full fat sour cream, but you could use full fat Greek yogurt in a pinch, the bread just won’t be quite as moist due to the lower fat content (when it comes to cakes and quick breads, fat = moisture). I do not recommend using low fat sour cream or low fat yogurt in this recipe for the same reason.

Cinnamon: Most other banana bread recipes out there call for like a tablespoon or more of cinnamon. I personally think that’s too much. I don’t know about you, but I want to actually taste the bananas. That’s why I only call for 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon, which is just enough to give it a whisper of cinnamon without overpowering the banana itself (or the brown butter for that matter).