My First Time to Bake with Gluten-Free Flour – Banana Bread with Unexpected Texture – But Delicious – What Do I Know about Gluten-Free Baking – Nada – But Learning –

I’ve baked banana breads multiple times in my lifetime with very few failures, if any. I went into this banana bread project expecting success, but here’s what happened.

First: Substitutions. Cooks learn to use what they have on hand when possible. Changing an ingredient in a recipe with a comparable substance is standard practice. If a cook does not learn to to this, there would never be an impromptu dish prepared, because there would always be some ingredient missing from the cupboard. Seldom does a substitution cause a problem.

Substituted Honey for sugar and Agave Nectar for Maple Syrup

All the ingredients for gluten-free banana bread

I had to make two substitutions. I needed 1/2 cup of turbinado sugar, which I did not have, but I had 1/4 cup of white sugar and 1/4 cup of honey. Also, the recipe called for 3 tablespoons of maple syrup. I didn’t have maple syrup, so I used Agave nectar. I prepared the recipe as written with those exceptions.

I poured the mixture into a loaf pan and slid it into my preheated oven. The recipe called for baking it only about half and hour, but I knew that had to be wrong. My loaf pan was filled almost to the top. I expected it to take 50 minutes to an hour to get done. We planned to take my banana bread to a meeting last night to share with other attendees, but that’s not what happened. We took popcorn.

Sink full of Banana Bread Mess to Clean Up

Banana Bread Mess Washed and placed in Drainer

Here is what my kitchen sink looked with the banana bread mixing bowls, measuring spoons and cups, and all the other items I used to prepare banana bread. I had it all cleaned up in a short fifteen or twenty minutes. Cooking makes a mess, but it’s worth the trouble.

I took the banana bread out of the oven after 50 minutes. The top was golden brown. The toothpick came out clean. I let it cool slightly since we needed to leave for the meeting in about forty-five minutes. I cut the loaf through the middle to see what it looked like. It was very moist; in fact, it looked like it should have baked longer. After it cooled down completely, I shared a slice with my husband. It was delicious! Still, I kept it at home. I wasn’t convinced that I baked it long enough.

As it cooled, the texture had changed. It was still very dense, more so than other banana bread, but, then, what does gluten-free banana bread look like? What does it taste like? What is the texture? We just know we like it. I’m going to make it again sometime. I’ll make sure to bake it long enough. I don’t mind taking the chance that it will come out the same way, because we really like it.

If anyone knows anything about baking gluten-free banana bread and what the texture should be and how it should taste, feel free to inform me. In the meantime, I will not complain about this recipe. I miss banana bread, and this one is gluten-free. Adjusting to life without wheat in it has been a challenge, but it was necessary. I’m doing very well learning to cook gluten-free and finding restaurants and retailers that accommodate people with wheat allergy.