Made with overripe bananas, butter, brown sugar, vanilla, and sourdough discard, this sourdough banana bread is tender and sweet, putting a tangy spin on the classic quick bread.
Key Takeaways: Sourdough Banana Bread
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Bake Time: 50 minutes
- Total Time: 1 hour, 5 minutes
- Servings: 12 slices
- Cook Method: Baked in a 9×5 loaf pan.
- Flavor & Texture: Golden brown with a slightly crisp exterior, this loaf is moist and packed with banana flavor.
- Difficulty: Easy. The ingredients mix up quickly and bake until golden and set.
- Why this Recipe? This recipe is delicious and easy to make, offering plenty of banana flavor and added moisture from the sourdough discard.
Moist, tender, and flavorful, this sourdough banana bread is a delightfully tangy version of the tried and true classic. It’s easy to make, offers a long-fermented option, uses up sourdough discard, and serves as an irresistible breakfast, dessert, or snack.
Serve sourdough banana bread warm or cold with an optional spread of raw milk butter or homemade apple butter.
Check out a full list of my favorite sourdough quick bread recipes for more delicious ways to use discard.
Why You’ll Love This Recipe
Consistent classic – This recipe turns out well every time, making it an easy go-to for breakfast, brunch, or a delicious grab-and-go snack.
Moist and delicious – Between the mashed bananas and sourdough discard, this recipe is packed with moisture and flavor.
Sourdough discard – This recipe is a great use of sourdough discard, which is always plentiful here. Check out more sourdough discard desserts in my roundup.
Ingredients
Flour – All-purpose flour works very well in this recipe. When I make this for my family, I love to use freshly milled flour. I put my bowl on my kitchen scale and measure out 280 grams of soft white wheat. After milling, I proceed with the recipe as usual. Learn how to convert any recipe to freshly milled in my how-to post.
Sourdough discard – Either discard or active sourdough starter works fine.
Bananas – Overripe bananas are best for their heightened flavor and sweetness. I always buy bananas in bulk and let them get very ripe on the counter. After a couple of batches of this banana bread, I peel the rest and put them in a Ziploc bag to freeze. They are perfect for berry kefir smoothies.
Vanilla – Store-bought vanilla works great, but you can’t beat the flavor of homemade vanilla extract.
A full ingredient list with exact amounts can be found in the recipe card below.
How to Make Sourdough Banana Bread
Step 1: Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and lightly grease a 9×5 loaf pan (or line with parchment paper). In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.
Step 2: In a stand mixer or separate bowl, whisk melted butter and brown sugar for five minutes, until light and fluffy.
Step 3: Add mashed bananas, eggs, sourdough discard, and vanilla to the butter mixture. Whisk until smooth.
Step 4: Fold in the dry ingredients a little at a time. Be careful not to over-mix. Gently fold in any other add-ins you would like (up to ¾ cup of pecans, walnuts, chocolate chips, etc.).
Step 5: Pour the batter evenly into your prepared loaf pan, smoothing the top.
Step 6: Bake for 50-60 minutes until golden brown. Test the bread at 50 minutes with a toothpick or cake tester. If the toothpick comes out clean, the loaf is done baking. Cool in the pan for one hour before slicing.
How to Make Long Fermented Sourdough Banana Bread
Step 1: Approximately 12-24 hours before you plan to bake the banana bread, combine flour, melted butter, eggs, and sourdough discard in a large bowl. Cover with a towel and ferment at room temperature for 6 hours, then refrigerate for another 6-18 hours to ferment further.
Step 2: The next day, preheat the oven to 350 degrees and prepare your loaf pan by greasing or lining with parchment paper. Using the bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, add the fermented batter, baking powder, baking soda, salt, brown sugar, mashed bananas, and vanilla. Mix on low to medium speed until completely combined. You can mix by hand, but the fermented dough will be stiff and difficult to combine.
Step 3: Pour the batter into a loaf pan and bake for 50-60 minutes until golden and set.
Step 4: Cool for one hour before slicing and serving.
Lisa’s Expert Tips
- If you don’t have overripe bananas but want to make banana bread, you can speed up the process by baking unpeeled bananas on a baking sheet for about 30 minutes in a 250-degree oven. They will be brown on the outside when ready.
- Don’t over-mix the batter. Mixing encourages gluten formation, too much of which results in a dense, tough loaf.
- You can also make this recipe as muffins. Following the same recipe, distribute the batter into regular-sized muffin tins and bake for 20-25 minutes until they start to turn golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean.
- If you like more texture, reserve some banana during mashing to chop into larger pieces for a heartier bite of banana. I do the same with rough chopping the apples in these healthy apple and banana muffins – I love some fruit texture!
- If you want to take this over the top and satisfy a sweet tooth, make this cream cheese frosting to pipe over the loaf.
- If you are using freshly milled grains for this recipe, I recommend weighing the flour instead of using volume measurements. Grain mills vary greatly – some create very fine and fluffy flour, while others are a little more coarse. This makes volume measurements unpredictable. Using a kitchen scale and calculating the grams is much more reliable, ensuring you end up with a delicious end product.
Sourdough Banana Bread FAQs
Adding sourdough starter or discard to a banana bread batter contributes moisture and flavor. Long-fermenting the batter breaks down the grains, allowing for better digestion and developing a more pronounced sourdough tang.
One of the most common mistakes is mixing the batter too much. While it seems right to have a smooth batter, mixing causes gluten formation, so mixing the batter too much creates a more dense, tough crumb.
Warm spices, such as cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and cardamom, enhance the flavor and sweetness of the bananas.
The key to deeply flavored banana bread is overripe bananas. Spotted bananas have more converted sugars and a stronger aroma.
More Dessert Recipes from the Farmhouse
- Lemon Poppyseed Muffins
- Pineapple Upside Down Cake
- One-bowl Lemon Olive Oil Cake
- Berry Crisp with Einkorn
- Earl Grey Cake
If you try this recipe and love it, I would love it if you could come back and give it 5 stars! Tag me on Instagram @farmhouseonboone.
Sourdough Banana Bread
Video
Equipment
Ingredients
- 2 cups all-purpose flour, 280 grams
- 1 teaspoon baking soda, 3 grams
- 2 teaspoons baking powder, 8 grams
- 1 teaspoon salt, 5 grams
- ½ cup melted butter, 114 grams
- 1 cup dark brown sugar, 200 grams
- 3 ripe bananas, 350g
- 2 large eggs
- ½ cup sourdough starter discard, 125 grams
- 1 teaspoon vanilla, 5 grams
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees and lightly grease a 9×5 loaf pan (or line with parchment paper). In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.
- In a stand mixer or separate bowl, whisk melted butter and brown sugar for five minutes, until light and fluffy.
- Add mashed bananas, eggs, sourdough discard, and vanilla to the butter mixture. Whisk until smooth.
- Fold in the dry ingredients a little at a time. Be careful not to over-mix. Gently fold in any other add-ins you would like (up to ¾ cup of pecans, walnuts, chocolate chips, etc.).
- Pour the batter evenly into your prepared loaf pan, smoothing the top.
- Bake for 50-60 minutes until golden brown. Test the bread at 50 minutes with a toothpick or cake tester. If the toothpick comes out clean, the loaf is done baking. Cool in the pan for one hour before slicing.
How to Make Long Fermented Sourdough Banana Bread
- Approximately 12-24 hours before you plan to bake the banana bread, combine flour, melted butter, eggs, and sourdough discard in a large bowl. Cover with a towel and ferment at room temperature for 6 hours, then refrigerate for another 6-18 hours to ferment further.
- The next day, preheat the oven to 350 degrees and prepare your loaf pan by greasing or lining with parchment paper. Using the bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, add the fermented batter, baking powder, baking soda, salt, brown sugar, mashed bananas, and vanilla. Mix on low to medium speed until completely combined. You can mix by hand, but the fermented dough will be stiff and difficult to combine.
- Pour the batter into a loaf pan and bake for 50-60 minutes until golden and set.
- Cool for one hour before slicing and serving.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
This banana bread turned out so good! I added white chocolate chips to it and the family loved it.
That is wonderful to hear and white chocolate chips sounds amazing!
Hi! Delicious recipe. The center of my bread sank when I took it out of the oven to cool. It this because I used active sourdough? What else would cause this? We’ll still eat it up, it’s yummy!
Possibly. It could also be too much leavener, over mixing, or improper oven temperature. I’m glad you are still able to enjoy it.
I was looking for something sweet that was quick to use up some discard. Tried this nana bread, the non fermented version. It was absolutely perfect. The only thing I added was a tsp of Vietnamese cinnamon that I just received from King Arthur bakers and couldn’t wait to try. Delicious recipe
So glad you enjoyed it!
I did this as well, with Saigon cinnamon!
So excited I found this blog-it’s literally changing the way we eat in the best possible way! Sourdough has been amazing for our family.
I love to hear this! Sourdough is a game changer, that’s for sure!
Hi Lisa,
I have been enjoying your recipes! I used the overnight fermented process for this banana bread. It’s in the oven rising nicely and it smells sooo good! However the challenge I had was the refrigerated dough got so hard, and probably it would break my electric mixer….😬 I think that the dough should be left in room temperature after it was taken out of fridge before move onto the next steps. I already added sugar and banana in the stiff dough, so I used double boiler method with lukewarm water which worked well. 😊
Oh no that is not good. I’ll check it out. Thanks
Have you ever tried using honey or maple syrup in place of brown sugar ?
I’ve made it 3 times now and use 1/2 cup of honey instead of the sugar. Tastes wonderful! I also add chocolate chips.
Is it possible to sub coconut oil for the butter? I have a friend who is DF and I would love to make this for her!
Yes, that should work just fine.
I am Impressed! I’ve been a baker since I was about 5 yrs old and have made the same banana bread recipe my entire life. Just recently getting back into using sourdough I stumble onto your site and reluctantly made your Banana Bread recipe with some sourdough discard (using the extended fermentation method) and WOW! That is the moistest, lightest, most flavorful banana bread I’ve ever made! Excited to try more of your recipes. Thanks for sharing your knowledge and journey with us!
Wow! What a compliment. Thank you for sharing such a positive review!
These were delicious. I used 1/4 c. coconut sugar and added about 1/4 c. of chocolate chips. I also used 1/2 spelt and 1/2 AP.
Definitely going on the rotation.
So glad you enjoyed them. And chocolate chip banana bread also sounds amazing.
I made your banana bread today and really enjoyed it. This is the time I have used my sourdough for anything other than waffles or pancakes. When I cut 3 slices of it there was a hole in the middle of the loaf. Could you please tell me what when wrong and how to prevent it from happening again? Thank you for your help.
Hmm. I wonder if it was from over mixing of the batter. Glad it was still tasty though.
I made this today (I’m on a roll for baking these past few days as I missed my sourdough stuck in the back of the fridge) for our dessert. My 7 year old who is a selective eater and doesn’t usually like banana bread, ate a slice, and had asked me if he could have it for his school lunch hahaha….totally unexpected.
Thats a serious compliment! Glad everyone enjoyed.