Healthy Banana Bread

We eat eggs or oatmeal most mornings, but sometimes it’s nice to have something baked. I especially love warm sweet banana bread with my coffee.

Unfortunately, most banana bread recipes are not very healthy. Unsoaked/unleavened whole wheat flour isn’t good for you due to the phytic acid which blocks mineral absorption. (Read more about how phytic acid causes tooth decay here.) Refined white flour has almost no nutrition.

To make a truly healthy banana bread, I recommend using sprouted flour. For this recipe, I used whole wheat sprouted flour. This is flour that is made from sprouted whole wheat (the sprouting helps to reduce the phytic acid), and freshly ground. (Check my resources page for where to buy sprouted flour.)

Also, most banana bread recipes are way too sweet. When I want to eat banana bread, I don’t want an overly sugary dessert. I want something in between bread and a pastry. I like to be able to taste the banana in banana bread — not a wall of sugar.

I based this recipe on the one from Simply Recipes, but I modified it to use 75% less sugar. I also used maple syrup instead of refined sugar. Maple syrup is a low-glycemic sweetener and it’s much more nutritious than refined sugar.

This banana bread is also healthy because I used real grass-fed butter and a pastured egg — farm-fresh foods that are much more nutritious than butter and eggs from factory farms. A pastured egg has 5 times more vitamin D than battery eggs. Read more about how to buy pastured eggs.

Lastly, banana bread is a wonderful way to use up overripe bananas. Instead of throwing away bananas that become brown and overripe, just toss them in the freezer. When you have 3 or 4 bananas, just pull them out of the freezer and you’re ready to make banana bread. It’s actually best to do it this way because after the bananas have been frozen, they just pop right out of the peels (after you let them defrost on the counter for an hour or so) and you don’t even have to mash them.

This banana bread is much healthier but you will never know it. It tastes just like regular banana bread — only not as cloyingly sweet. And you can feel confident that you are feeding your family something not only delicious, but also super healthy.

Healthy Banana Bread

Ingredients:

Ripe bananas, mashed (4) — or just defrosted from the freezer
Grass-fed butter (1/4 cup)
Maple syrup (1/4 cup) — where to buy maple syrup
Pastured egg (1)
Vanilla, preferably organic (1 tsp)
Baking soda (1 tsp)
Pinch of sea salt — where to buy sea salt
Sprouted flour (1 1/2 cups) — where to buy flours

Equipment:

Saucepan
Wooden Spoon

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

2. Melt the butter on low heat in a saucepan. You also use ghee, and/or you can substitute coconut oil for half of the butter.

3. Take the ripe bananas out of the freezer and let them defrost for an hour or so. Then peel and place in a bowl. If you are not using frozen bananas, you will need to mash them a bit.

4. Mix the butter in with the bananas, then beat in the egg.

5. Add the vanilla, maple syrup, baking soda, and sea salt.

6. Finally, mix in the sprouted flour. You don’t need a mixer for this — you can just use a wooden spoon. Also, I don’t sift — I just dump it in.

7. Butter a loaf pan (preferably enamelware) and spoon the banana bread mixture in.

8. Bake for about an hour.

9. Remove from oven. Let it cool for about 15 minutes before serving.

This post is part of A Nourished Start, a carnival of healthy breakfast ideas at The Nourishing Gourmet. Please visit The Nourishing Gourmet for more healthy breakfast ideas.

Disclosure: cmp.ly/4 and cmp.ly/5

Tagged as: banana bread, grass-fed butter, healthy banana bread, healthy breakfast ideas, maple syrup, nutritious banana bread, pastured eggs, phytic acid, Recipes, sprouted flour