Banana Pistachio Yogurt Bread Recipe, Whats Cooking America (2024)

FAQs

What does adding yogurt to bread dough do? ›

Adding milk to bread dough makes it looser and softer while using sour cream, yogurt, or buttermilk makes the dough tighter. The tightening effect is caused by acidity. Fermented dairy products have a lower pH than milk or water.

Using too much baking soda or baking powder can really mess up a recipe, causing it to rise uncontrollably and taste terrible.

Excess moisture (when compared to the recipe's dry ingredients) means a greater potential for banana bread to sink in the middle. Recipes that provide you with the exact amount of mashed bananas by measuring cup (e.g. 1 ½ cups of mashed bananas) or by weight (e.g. grams) tend to have fewer problems. Why?

Here's just a brief list: Its creaminess helps keep baked goods moist. Its tanginess imparts a crave-worthy, old-fashioned flavor. Its acidity helps activate baking soda, which can make baked goods fluffy and light.

As a general rule, you can use either baking soda OR baking powder in banana bread – both ingredients will make your banana bread rise. While baking soda will react with acidic ingredients in the batter to raise your bread, baking powder can leaven banana bread without the addition of acidic ingredients.

The basic banana bread formula

Most banana bread recipes have the same formula, roughly: 115 grams (½ cup) butter (or oil) + 200 grams (1 cup) sugar (white or brown) + 2 large eggs + 2 or 3 mashed bananas + (190 grams) 1-½ cups flour + 1 teaspoon baking soda + ½ teaspoon salt.

But if you try to use up all your bananas without paying attention to the ratio of other ingredients, your bread can turn out damp, soggy, and mushy. Contrary to what one may think, there is such a thing as using too many bananas in a banana bread.

Using too much banana could make your bread heavy and damp in the center, causing it to appear undercooked and unappealing. If you have bananas leftover, you can always freeze them for later use.

Overmixing is a common problem with quick breads and is certain to happen with an electric mixer. Use only 15 to 20 light hand strokes with a spoon when mixing the combined liquid and combined dry ingredients together.

Try lowering the temperature by 25°F, and bake for a slightly longer time. If you are using a dark colored pan like many non-stick pans it will cause the outside to brown more quickly while the inside stays raw. The same fix will work, just lower the temperature.

How to tell if banana bread is done without a toothpick? ›

Our Favorite Alternative to Toothpicks

Look at your knife set and find the one with the thinnest blade. Then insert the blade into the center of the cake. If the knife comes out clean, the cake is done. If batter or crumbs stick to the blade, let your cake bake a few minutes more and retest with a clean knife.

When the center of your bread is baked through a thermometer will register between 200°F and 205°F. No part of your loaf should be below 200°F — except perhaps the very top, which may produce an unreliable reading due to the thermometer's tip being partially exposed to room-temperature air.

Over mixing the batter

Some gluten is essential but, the more you mix, the longer those gluten strands become. Mix even slightly too much and you wind up with a banana bread that's tough and gummy rather than soft and tender.

Yoghurt contains useful bacteria. They cause fermentation in the batter or dough if added in proper proportion. In this process, the heat, carbon dioxide and other gases are produced. This helps the flour to rise.

Instant milk powder makes bread dough super soft and fluffy and also helps to give it a good rise. It also contributes to the dough staying nice and soft after baking for a little longer than a recipe that does not use milk powder.

With just self-rising flour and plain Greek yogurt, you can make almost any bread-based creation you can think of. Thick, Greek-style yogurt gives the dough its moisture and tenderness, while the leavening agents in the flour allow the dough to rise without yeast.

Some of the most common bread mix-ins are dried fruits like cranberries, apricots, raisins, and currants. Since these mix-ins are dried, they naturally absorb water. If we added them straight into the dough, they would absorb a significant amount of our dough's water, and would affect the final results.