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.
Heyy I choose to use honey or Maple Syrup to bake with and I’m fairly new to Sourdough. Do you think I could swap the sugar out without any problems?
Yes, that should work great!
Made this recipe today and it came out so wonderful! I had 4 bananas so I added a bit more flour and made 4 mini loaves. They have such a perfect rise to them. Already printed and have the recipe in my cookbook now!
What happens if you omit the baking powder? Thank you!
The baking powder is what gives quick breads like this rise.
Thank you
Hi! I am doing the long ferment process for this banana bread and I forgot to put the dough into the fridge after 6 hours. I left it out overnight so about 12 hours. Is it still okay to use? I followed the directions so the fermenting dough has egg in it. Thanks!
It should be okay. There’s always a chance of it over fermenting though.
Hi Becci! I just did this too last night. Mine turned out fine, definitely not over fermented but my house is cool in this midwestern winter time.
Made this exactly as written and it is AMAZING! My toddler can not get enough! Wondering about using white sugar instead of brown sugar for some bulk baking to share with others.
How much would that alter the taste and/or texture?
It shouldn’t alter the taste too much!
hey! what are your thoughts on substituting olive oil or coconut oil for the butter? (It would also need to be long fermented!)
That should be fine
Great tasting recipe but the couple of times I have baked it the flour and starter combo do not fully incorporate into the batter. I get lumps of flour distributed throughout the loaf. THey fully bake and are not doughy but I don’t like it from an aesthetic point of vies.
They should fully incorporate. Make sure you mix it really well for them to combine. Also adding all of the ingredients in the order it calls for will help to make sure it incorporates.
Thanks. Will give this a try next time. Also, I have found that the loaves crumble quite a bit. Any suggestions on how to firm up a bit?
Regarding a long ferment, I followed your directions but ended up with chunks of dough that wouldn’t mix in well. Which resulted in weird chunky banana bread. It tasted fine but wasn’t what I was going for. Any ideas?
Could I just mix everything except the baking soda, baking powder and salt, then let it sit for 4-6 hours before baking?
Mine did this too! It’s in the oven now and I’m interested to see how it turns out.
350g of banana was 5 small bananas for me. Did you weigh the bananas before or after they were peeled? I weighed after and I am thinking it didn’t mix well because it was too moist maybe.
I am curious on the mixing in of the long ferment version…. Wondering if I should let the cold refrigerated dough get to room temp or warm it slightly (like I do with the long ferment cinnamon roll recipe) to help it mix better? The dough just ends up with chunks, not mixing with the rest of the ingredients.
I have now tried both the discard and the feed versions, and the muffin style too. All 3 were wonderful and everyone loves them. Then, I had to try some additions. So, I added walnuts once, coconut once (and tried a toasted coconut on top) and even a cinnamon swirl. Just so YUMMY. Thank you for this and all the effort you put into everything. Love your channel and all the additional helps you provide.
Hi, Can I mix all ingredients and long ferment them overnight in the fridge or do I need to long ferment just the recommended ingredients?
Thank you!
Just long ferment the recommended ingredients.