NATIONAL BANANA BREAD DAY
February 23rd annually recognizes a well-known food holiday, National Banana Bread Day.
National Banana Bread Day
Bakers
know that to make sweet and delicious banana bread, they need to use
fully ripe, mashed bananas. The resulting quick bread is moist and
almost cake-like. And while some recipes call for yeast, most don't.
Either way, the finished product makes a tasty sliced snack. Toast it
and add butter for an even more satisfying treat!
In the 1930s, baking soda and baking powder made banana bread and
other quick breads standard features in American cookbooks. Pillsbury’s
included banana bread recipes in its 1933 Balanced Recipes cookbook, too. The release of Chiquita Banana's Recipe Book in 1950 further secured the banana bread's acceptance.
Surprisingly,
bananas first made their appearance in the United States in 1870. For a
long time, Americans saw the tropical fruit as merely that - a fruit,
not an ingredient. It would take a few decades before they started
seeing the banana's potential.
Early Banana Bread
One
early recipe came from The Vienna Model Bakery. It advertised banana
bread as something new in the April 21, 1893, edition of St. Louis
Post-Dispatch. A new restaurant/bakery chain owned by Gaff, Fleischmann
& Company, The Vienna Model Bakery was known for its baked goods and
was likely one of the first to produce banana bread in the United
States. The recipe was made with banana flour, made by drying strips of
the fruit, then grinding it to a powder. This process had long been used
in the West Indies.
In Hawaii during World War I, a surplus of bananas resulted from very
few ships available to export the fruit. To prevent waste, alternative
uses for bananas were developed. For example, bakeries started
incorporating the fruit into their bread.
This recipe was printed in The Maui News on April 12, 1918, for banana bread:
2/3 banana
1/3 flour
Yeast, coconut milk, or water
There
was also rationing of staple food items such as flour. Banana flour was
a suggested substitute. It was touted as a health food and recommended
for a vegetarian diet.
This, of course, is not the quick bread we know today. A recipe submitted by Mrs. Dean in the February 18, 1918, issue of The Garden Island paper for a banana muffin might more closely resemble the quick bread we think of today.
1 cup cornmeal
3-1/2 teaspoons of baking powder
2 tablespoons of sugar
1 sifted banana
3/4 cup rye flour
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup milk
1 egg
1 tablespoon Crisco
Mix dry ingredients, add banana, milk, and egg, and Crisco.
Quick Bread and Muffin
The
difference between a quick bread and a muffin in baking has a lot to do
with the type of fat and how it is mixed, creating a different crumb or
texture to the bread.
In 1927, Unifruit (a wholesale produce company) offered a free cookbook called From the Tropics to Your Table. The
book offered recipes full of bananas as ingredients, including banana
muffins and breads. This little cookbook would have been handy during
the Great Depression, which was just around the corner. At the time,
families utilized every scrap of food, including overripe bananas. They
cooked overripe bananas and other fruits and vegetables into breads,
stews, and other dishes when flavor and texture were not as appealing
raw.
How to Observe National Banana Bread Day
- Bake your favorite version of banana bread to celebrate.
- With so many varieties to try - banana nut, chocolate banana, and more - you can make more than one!
- Invite someone to join you or give a loaf or two away.
- Visit your local bakery and pick up some banana bread. Don't forget to give them a shout-out!
National Banana Bread Day History
National
Day Calendar continues researching the origins of this quick bread
celebration. We suspect it was founded by someone who thinks it's the
best thing since sliced bread!
Banana Bread FAQ
Q. Can I bake banana bread muffins instead?
A. Yes! That would be a perfect treat for the day.
Q. Can banana bread be frozen?
A. Yes. Wrap it well and place it in a freezer-safe container. It should keep for at least three months.
Q. My bananas aren't ripe enough for banana bread. What can I do?
A. Poke holes into the peel using a fork. Place in a 300°F oven for 15-20 minutes. The bananas should soften.
Q. My bananas are very ripe but I don't have time to bake banana bread this week. What can I do?
A. Freeze them in their skins. When you're ready to bake bread, let
them come to room temperature and the bananas will slide right out of
the skins and into your mixing bowl!
Also
Dog Biscuit Day
Tile Day
Today's Thought
You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.
25 Days Until Spring
In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours. ~ Mark Twain
