Banana Bread, Powered by Sourdough

A sweet treat made with starter

Whenever you feed your sourdough starter you're usually called upon to discard a portion of it. You don't technically have to throw it away, but you probably want to get rid of it somehow, since feeding results in growth, and there's only so much starter you want to have on hand at any given moment.

Herein lies one of my new-found quests: to uncover recipes for that chunk of starter I want to get rid of when I feed my cultures.

Using sourdough starter instead of baker's yeast in this version of banana bread resulted in some lovely bubbles inside the finished bread, along with an every-so-slight tanginess that kept this treat from being overly sweet or dense, yet still very moist. It's still very much banana bread; not a rustic loaf, but a dessert or breakfast treat -- the starter simply acts as a leavening agent.

To keep myself from pigging out on it I sliced it up before storing in Ziplock bags in the freezer -- all the better to microwave a slice or two as a snack. Even then, it tasted as if it were fresh from the oven :)

Sourdough Banana Bread

Adapted from The Fresh Loaf

Ingredients 

a scant 1/3 cup of canola oil (you could use butter here)

1 cup sugar (or, in my case, 1/2 cup sugar, 1/2 cup Splenda)

1 egg

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup mashed banana (2-3 bananas)

1 cup sourdough starter

3/4 cups chopped walnuts

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

1. In a medium-sized bowl, cream together the sugar, egg, and oil using a hand mixer.

2. Stir in bananas and sourdough starter, but don't overmix. Add the vanilla extract.

3. In a separate bowl, combine flour, salt, baking soda, and baking powder. Add walnuts.

4. Add flour mixture to the liquid ingredients and stir together until just combined.  Pour into your loaf pan.

5. Bake in an oven preheated to 350 degrees F for an hour, until a knife or toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean :)