A classic dessert bread gets a nutty, umami twist: Miso Banana Bread

Sweet white miso adds delicious umami, sunflower and pumpkin seeds a nice crunch, to this not-to-sweet spin on banana bread. Recipe below.

WE LOVE BANANA BREAD. Blue Kitchen already has three different banana bread recipes, and to be honest, I was surprised that there were only three. Now there are four.

This bread came about as the result of a routine shopping trip to 88 Marketplace, our almost-neighborhood Asian grocery, to replenish various supplies, among them miso paste. We were putting away our groceries and I was glumly looking at a pile of overripe bananas on the counter, thinking it’s time for banana bread, and the little, dim light bulb inside my head flickered and then lit up like a searchlight: bananas… and miso? Yes, and miso!!!

Turns out there are several approaches to miso-banana bread, some without dairy, and others with an array of dairies—mascarpone, sour cream, yogurt. I went in the direction of adding in buttermilk, because we have some in the fridge and because I love buttermilk.

Miso—the miso we in the US are most familiar with—is made by inoculating soybeans with koji, a cultivated mold grown on rice. The koji’s enzymes break down the structure of the beans into their component sugars, fatty acids and amino acids, creating a thick, deep, rich paste that can be the basis for soups, or added to sauces, or used in numerous ways that take advantage of its umami magic.

For this recipe, we used sweet white miso, which is a bit milder and less salty than regular white miso. It’s still plenty salty, of course—you will notice that this recipe does not call for salt.

If you are new to miso, start with sweet white miso, or simply out-and-out white miso. Then branch out to red miso, which has fermented for a longer time and has a deeper, funkier flavor. There are also misos made from a mix of soybeans and barley; and a very cool thing is that people are experimenting with other legumes and grains, so that you may be able to find miso made from things like English peas, farro or lima beans.

Finally, this bread is different from the usual banana bread in that it is not as sweet; the miso imparts a wonderful caramelly flavor, and the seeds on top give it a nice crunch that is the perfect counterpoint to the mellow bread. It’s lovely thing with a cup of coffee or as a nice bit of dessert, and it also improves overnight. Give it a try.

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Miso Banana Bread

Sweet white miso adds delicious umami, sunflower and pumpkin seeds a nice crunch, to this not-to-sweet spin on banana bread.

Course Dessert

Servings 12 slices

Equipment

• 4x8 loaf pan

Ingredients

• 1-3/4 cups unbleached white flour plus extra to flour the pan
• 1-1/4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon nutmeg
• 4 ripe bananas
• 1 stick butter or plant butter, heated just until it melts, or 1/2 cup vegetable oil plus extra butter for the pan
• 1/4 cup sweet white miso paste
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 1/4 brown sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 cup buttermilk
• 1 tablespoon toasted sunflower seeds
• 1 tablespoon toasted pumpkin seeds

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 350ºF. Measure the flour, baking powder, baking soda and nutmeg into a medium bowl.
• In a large bowl, start by mashing the bananas. Leave them a bit chunky. Then add in the butter or oil, miso paste, vanilla, and the sugars, mix, then add in the eggs and buttermilk and mix some more. You can use a mixer for this if you like, but doing it by hand is easy and works out just fine.
• Mix until everything is uniform and smooth—it won’t take long. Then add in the dry ingredients a bit at a time. You want everything to be just blended together but not overmixed. The batter will be rather thick (but not anywhere as thick as the blueberry bundt cake we made a couple of weeks ago).
• Lightly butter and flour the loaf pan. Scrape the batter into the pan and level it gently with your spatula. Artfully scatter the pumpkin and sunflower seeds on top—you may want to gently press them in a little bit.
• Set in the middle of the oven. After 30 minutes, rotate the pan 180 degress. Bake for a total of approximately 60 minutes. Keep an eye on the bread and test at about 50 minutes—the tester inserted near the center should come out clean. If the top is browning but the center is not baked yet, put a piece of foil on top.
• When it is done, let it cool in the pan on a rack for an hour, then turn it out onto the rack to finish cooling.

Kitchen Notes

Storing miso. Keep it in an airtight container in the fridge. It will grow more intense over time, but it likely will not go bad, and you will have it for ages.

No buttermilk? Use plain Greek yogurt or sour cream instead.

Liz’s Crockery Corner. This is one of the first antique plates I ever bought, somewhere in mid-Michigan, eons ago. I tell Terry that I rode my dinosaur to a farm auction to bid on it.

This pattern is called feather edge flow blue. It was made, probably in Leeds, in the early 19th century, at the beginning of the vast expansion of the English industrial potteries. This platter is an example the most modest of modest china—indeed, students of antique English ceramics always point out that feather edge flow blue was the most inexpensive china of all. For a family with limited means but a hankering for something attractive, this ironstone platter, with no more decoration than an incised feather-like border and a thin blue lip, would have been a great choice—shapely, durable, and with a whisper of flow blue that, even for the most humble home, offered a gratifying bit of English elegance.