Making banana bread for your family on the weekend might be a bit of a tradition, and many families enjoy it together as a type of comfort food.
It’s certainly tasty, and it’s a dessert that you can feel good about feeding to your loved ones. While it isn’t necessarily a type of healthy food, it’s better than buying processed desserts from the store.
If you’re new to making it, you might wind up making some minor mistakes. For example, your banana bread might turn out a little bit crumbly.
Why does this happen, and what can you do to stop it?
Read on to learn about the common missteps.
1 – Using Too Much Flour
Using too much flour is a common reason for banana bread to turn out crumbly. You’re only supposed to use as much flour as the recipe calls for.
Often, people will mix the ingredients together fast without taking the time to check the recipe twice. Perhaps you read the ingredient amounts wrong and added more flour than you were meant to.
When you put too much flour into the banana bread mixture, it’ll make it very crumbly. The bread will swell too much while baking, and it simply won’t stay together properly once it is out of the oven.
Always look over the ingredient measurements carefully. It helps you to avoid little mistakes so you can get the best results.
2 – You May Have Used Too Much Leavening
Much like using too much flour can make banana bread turn out wrong, using too much leavening can also have an impact. You need to use leavening agents so the bread will rise, but you’re not meant to use too much.
Banana bread recipes are generally going to call for either baking soda or baking powder. You need to use a certain amount of these ingredients to get the right results.
If you accidentally use a bit too much, it might make the bread crumbly. You might even have made a simple mistake, such as using a tablespoon instead of a teaspoon.
To avoid this issue, take your time and make sure to read the recipe. Note how much baking soda or baking powder the recipe calls for, and be sure to use the exact amount that you need.
3 – Did You Forget to Grease the Pan?
Greasing the bread pan is always going to be wise when baking banana bread. Failure to do this makes the bread stick to the pan, and no one wants to deal with that.
It’s annoying to not be able to get the bread out of the pan easily. Always remember to grease the pan to avoid complications.
Sadly, there are times when the bread will get so stuck to the pan that it’ll come out in pieces. You won’t be able to make clean slices of bread when this occurs.
In the future, you should grease the bread pan using butter or oil. Sprinkle a small amount of flour in the pan after buttering it or oiling it up.
If you don’t wish to use butter or oil, it’s fine to use parchment paper. Parchment paper is handy because it allows you to lift the bread up and out of the pan after it has finished baking.
4 – Too Many Wet Ingredients
Using too many wet ingredients can have an impact on the bread, too. Sometimes when the ingredients aren’t balanced properly, it’ll cause the banana bread to turn out strangely.
Often, the banana bread will sink in the middle when you use too many wet ingredients. If you use too many wet ingredients, it might make it so the flour won’t be enough to keep up.
The flour is there to hold the bread together, but an excessive amount of wet ingredients will make this impossible. In this situation, the banana bread will turn out crumbly, and it’ll be hard to keep it together.
You must do your best to use the right balance of ingredients to get your dessert to turn out the way that it should. This is why following a tried and true recipe is the best thing you can do.
5 – You Didn’t Let the Bread Cool Long Enough
It takes time for banana bread to cool down. After taking it out of the oven, you’re meant to allow it to cool before you try to take it out of the pan.
If you attempt to take it out of the pan too soon, you might experience some problems. Occasionally, this might lead to you causing the banana bread to crumble.
There is a balance here that you need to find. Taking the bread out of the pan too soon might cause issues with crumbling, but waiting too long can lead to the bottom of the bread being soggy.
Ideally, you should allow the bread to cool for ten minutes in the pan. The bread loaf should be solid enough to be removed after this amount of time has passed.
Remove the bread from the tin and then allow it to cool for ten to fifteen minutes. After this amount of time has passed, it’s fine to slice and serve it.
The bread shouldn’t be crumbly at this point unless something else went wrong. Exercise patience, and always remember to let the bread cool for a bit before cutting into it.
What to Do with Broken Banana Bread
There are many things you can do with broken banana bread that will allow you to make use of it. You don’t have to throw it out just because it’s crumbly.
If it still tastes good, you can simply eat it if you want to. The crumbly nature doesn’t prevent you from enjoying it.
Some people choose to use broken banana bread as a topping on other types of desserts. For instance, you could put bits of it on top of vanilla ice cream.
There are so many ways that you can still enjoy broken banana bread. If something is wrong with the taste of the bread, you don’t need to force yourself to eat it, though.
Final Thoughts
You should be able to fix your issues with crumbly banana bread by avoiding certain mistakes. Once the bread is done, there’s nothing you can do to change the fact that it’s crumbly, though.
Just enjoy it as long as it tastes good. In the future, you can be careful and avoid the mistakes that caused it to turn out this way.
Typically, banana bread turns out crumbly when you use too much flour or too much leavening. You might have simply misread the amounts of ingredients that you need to use.
Sometimes banana bread will be crumbly when you don’t grease the pan. You might need to make it easier to get the bread out of the pan.
Even failing to allow the bread to cool for long enough can be a problem. So be patient and allow the bread to cool a bit before removing it from the pan.
This advice should help you to enjoy your banana bread to the fullest. Bake it for your family with confidence moving forward.
Sarah is the founder of Baking Kneads, LLC, a blog sharing guides, tips, and recipes for those learning how to bake. Growing up as the daughter of a baker, she spent much of her childhood learning the basics in a local bakery.