Sourdough Discard Banana Bread
This Sourdough Discard Banana Bread is super soft, sweet, and chocolatey. It only takes an hour to make and is an excellent way of using excess sourdough starter and overripe bananas!
This recipe uses sourdough discard, which is the excess starter you end up with after feeding your sourdough starter. I like to store my sourdough discard in a jar in the fridge. After a few feedings, I have plenty of discard to use in different bakes. In other words, this bread is made with cold, inactive sourdough discard straight from the fridge!
What you’ll need to make this banana bread:
Use ripe bananas!
The bananas are an essential part of this recipe. Please do not use bright yellow, fresh from the store bananas to make this recipe. The ripe (or overripe) bananas add a wonderful sweetness, flavor, and texture to the bread.
Another part I love about this sourdough discard banana bread is the addition of toasted walnuts! They add such a nice crunch and flavor to the bread. To toast them, simply add them to a dry pan over medium heat and keep stirring/moving the pan until they smell nice and toasted and start to brown a little. This bread is super flavorful. Enough with the bland banana breads already!
Here are some tools I recommend you have on hand to make this recipe a success:
- Digital Kitchen Scale is essential for exact measurements.
- Mixing Bowls – A set of three! Which is what you need for this recipe. You’ll need one bowl to mash the bananas in, one for the dry ingredients, and one for the wet ingredients.
- Whisk – this banana bread is all mixed by hand!
- Spatula – used to gently fold together the wet and dry ingredients.
- 10-inch Bread Pan – to bake the banana bread in.
Sourdough Discard Banana Bread
Equipment
- Digital kitchen scale
- Mixing Bowls
- Whisk
- Spatula
- 10-inch Bread Pan
Ingredients
- 300 g all-purpose flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp cinnamon
- ¼ tsp salt
- 100 g sugar
- 40 g brown sugar
- 100 g sunflower oil or other neutral oil
- 2 eggs
- 80 g sourdough discard 100% hydration
- 3 overripe bananas mashed
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 100 g dark chocolate 70% cocoa, chopped
- 60 g toasted walnuts finely chopped
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 360°F/180°C. Butter a 10-inch bread pan.
- Toast the walnuts in a dry pan over medium heat while stirring. Finely chop the toasted walnuts and the dark chocolate into chunks. Set aside.
- Combine the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt in a large mixing bowl.
- In a separate bowl, add sugar, brown sugar, sunflower oil, eggs, sourdough discard, mashed bananas, and vanilla extract. Stir with a whisk for a couple of minutes to combine.
- Pour the banana mixture over the dry ingredients and gently fold it in with a rubber spatula until the batter is smooth. Be careful not to overmix the batter, as this can result in a dense crumb. Lastly, fold in the toasted walnuts and chocolate chunks. It is up to you to add it all into the batter or save some to sprinkle on top.
- Pour the batter into your prepared bread pan. Sprinkle the rest of the walnuts/chocolate on top if desired.
- Bake the banana bread for 50-60 minutes until golden brown or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Loosely cover the bread with aluminum foil if it browns too quickly.
- Let the bread cool for 10-15 minutes in the pan and then transfer it to a cooling rack. I think banana bread is the absolute best to eat while it's still a bit warm! With a cup of coffee on the side… *drooling*. Enjoy!
Notes
Nutrition
If you liked this recipe, you might also like my Blueberry And Lemon Sourdough Babka recipe
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13 Comments
Jose Carlos
Hello Elise!
Thanks for the recipe!
What is the function of the Starter in the recipe if we are already using baking powder and flour?
Bread by Elise
Hi Jose! Thank you for showing interest in this recipe. As part of the feeding process, we have to discard some of the sourdough starter before refreshing the starter with water and flour. This can be pretty wasteful, so with this recipe I’m trying to encourage bakers to save their discard and use it. Sourdough discard has little rising power, so in this case, baking powder has to be added to achieve the desired result.
Shir
Wow! I didn’t have any bananas so I swapped with a mixed fruit puree thinking that it was gonna be a fail, but it turned out so good! A really soft and delicious cake!
Lisan
Hi, can I replace the oil with butter?
Bread by Elise
Yes 😊
Ana Patricia
I love your recipe. It’s the best banana bread. Can I replace the all purpose flour to almond flour?
Bread by Elise
Thanks so much, Ana! Unfortunately, I’ve never tried making this recipe with almond flour so I’m not sure how that would turn out.
Kosi
Please how is the sourdough discard made
Doughlores_Umbread
This is the second time I made your bananabread recipe. It’s lovely, although I do not like banana’s very much 🙄. But with the chocolate and the nuts…. hmmmm it’s in the oven right now and tomorrow my daughter will take 2 slices to school, 1 for herself and 1 for her teacher… we always do that! Also with your babka (I use your recipe to make cinnamon Babka). Teacher loves me and, she doesn’t know, love you too!!!
Thank you for your great, magnificent recipes!!!
Many thanks Patricia, and my Doughlores_Umbread of course.
Dawn
Easy and excellent!!!
Sjobo
I didn’t overmix the batter, but the crumb was dense 😔 taste was great though! In other recipies i made before, i used less flour, about 175 grams and the same ingredients you are using in your recipe except no discard and they always turned out great.
What went wrong?
Alanna
I will never make a different banana bread after trying this recipe, it’s so good!! I used a 9 inch bread pan, it turned out great. I couldn’t wait for my bananas to go as over-ripe as I usually use and it’s still amazing <3 thank you!
Mark R Owen
This is my favorite Banana Bread! So good. Love your site.