Banana bread is something of a staple at my parents’ house.  It’s not hot and ready every day, but it’s so common, there’s probably miniature loaves stashed away in their deep freeze somewhere.  Of course, they’ll stay there forever because thawed and baked banana bread will never compare to fresh from the oven for the first time banana bread.  And it’s so relatively inexpensive to make, why wouldn’t you just make a fresh batch when you want some?

Here’s how we make it.

Ingredients:

3 bananas, mashed to the appearance of chunky baby food (if your grocery frequently has overripe, nearing rotten bananas that they throw out, capitalize on it.  Those bananas make superior bread!)

2 eggs, beaten

2 cups flour

3/4 cup granulated sugar (sometimes, we use halfsies on brown sugar)

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda (slightly less if the flour is self-rising, which my mom’s always is.)

1/2 c chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease a loaf pan or buncha mini loaf pans (how we do it.)  Mix eggs and bananas in large bowl.  Mix in flour, sugar, salt and baking soda.  Add pecans.  Spoon batter into pans (if you’re using a big loaf pan, fill about 3/4 full.  For mini loaf pans, fill to slightly better than half full.)  Bake (for loaf pan, 1 hour.  For mini loaf pans, adjust time randomly–for the pans we have, it took about 20 minutes.)  Eat while still warm if at all possible.  Otherwise, when cool, store in an airtight container.