Clean Banana Bread Recipe (Wheat & Dairy Free)

If you are trying to convince anyone in your family to eat better, this clean banana bread recipe is what to serve first. This is the won’t-last-till-morning kind. I got the  recipe from a dear friend of mine, Karen, who adapted it from a recipe a Brazilian friend had given her. I don’t think the recipe is necessarily Brazilian, but it does have two secrets that make it so good (more on the secrets in a bit.) Anyway, Karen brought the baked banana bread over one day as a thank you for a favor I had done for her. The banana bread was so rich, sweet, good and delicious that I almost wasn’t sure it was “safe” to eat! Karen knows all about Clean Cuisine and my commitment to clean eating. Not only that, but Karen herself does her best to eat clean and since we swap recipes all the time, she is very well aware of the ingredients I use and don’t use. I was still suspicious though. The banana bread was so good I couldn’t help but ask if it was truly a “clean” recipe. The answer of course was yes. But Karen did make a few tweaks to the original recipe…

Clean Ingredient Swaps:

The basic banana bread recipe was already dairy free. Karen told me she had simply swapped the following ingredients from the basic recipe to make it compatible with what we promote on Clean Cuisine:

• Use One Degree Organic brand sprouted spelt flour in place of refined all purpose flour.
• Use unrefined coconut sugar in place of refined white sugar. (Note: this is a good article explaining why I like coconut sugar.)
• Use unrefined organic red palm oil in place of refined vegetable oil. (Note: this is a good article explaining why I like unrefined organic red palm oil.) You can also substitute extra virgin coconut oil if you like

2 Secrets to Making the Best Clean Banana Bread Recipe

Whether you are trying to make a clean banana bread recipe or a conventional one, the following two rules would still apply:

Secret #1: Use VERY Ripe Bananas

Perfectly overripe bananas are essential to the success of any banana bread recipe. Ideally the bananas should have yellow skins (no green!) with an even smattering of brown freckles. If you don’t have time to sit and wait around for your bananas to ripen to perfection, you can do what Epicurious suggests and bake unpeeled bananas on a baking sheet in a 250°F oven until soft, 15-20 minutes. Let cool, peel, and start baking

Secret #2: Use HOT Water

You want to use water that is almost boiling. It needs to be VERY hot.

Want a Clean Gluten Free Banana Bread Recipe?

If you want to make a clean gluten free banana bread, try incorporating the two secrets mentioned above into to my Gluten Free Banana Bread Recipe. You’ll notice my recipe uses hemp milk rather than water as the liquid, so I would simply heat the hemp milk before adding it. Ok! Let’s make some banana bread… Print