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Miso Banana Bread
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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.