With its super-moist and buttery texture, banana and brown sugar flavors, soft crumb, and 1,300+ reviews, this is a delicious AND undeniably popular banana bread recipe. You need 4 medium or 3 large ripe bananas.
I originally published this recipe in 2013 and have since added new photos and a few more success tips. It’s one of the most popular recipes I’ve published on this website, out of over 1,200. This recipe is such a fan favorite, that it deserved a spot in print! You’ll also find this recipe in my cookbook, Sally’s Baking 101.
One reader, Michele, says: “Perfectly delish every time! Absolutely foolproof. Nuts, no nuts, smidge more or less of sour cream—no problem… bigger bananas, smaller—no worries, perfect, beyond delicious EVERY time. ★★★★★”
This is my favorite banana bread recipe, one that I’ve cherished for years. It’s one of those classic recipes that you start to know by heart, just like a good pie crust or chocolate chip cookies recipe. This bread comes to mind first when I have leftover spotty bananas on the counter, and it’s the bread that’s on constant rotation in my freezer stash.
One reader, Tricia, commented: “I have this recipe on speed dial. LOL. It is so tasty and is always a crowd pleaser. My kids and entire family love it!!! ★★★★★”
Yes, I have this recipe on speed dial too!
I’ve tried dozens of banana bread recipes over the years, and when I baked and originally published this recipe many years ago, I never looked back.
Why You’ll Love This Banana Bread Recipe Too
- Mega banana flavor
- Not overly sweet, so banana flavor shines
- Dense, but still quite tender & soft
- Buttery & stays moist for days (tastes best on day 2, just like peanut butter chocolate chip zucchini bread)
- Straightforward, simple recipe
- Freezes wonderfully
- Excellent plain or with nuts or chocolate chips—or a swipe of cinnamon butter
How to Mash Bananas
Did you know you can use your electric mixer to mash bananas? Break or slice the spotty bananas into large pieces and place in the bowl of your stand mixer—or use a regular mixing bowl and your hand mixer. Begin beating on low, then gradually increase to medium-high speed as the bananas break down into mashed banana. Transfer the bananas to another bowl and use the mixing bowl for the butter and sugar. (No need to clean it—some mashed banana remnants is fine.)
I do this when I mash bananas for banana muffins and banana chocolate chip breakfast cookies too.
Other Banana Bread Ingredients
- Butter: Use softened butter for a soft texture and irresistible butter flavor.
- Brown Sugar: Use all brown sugar in this recipe. In the headnotes for this chocolate chip cookies recipe, I explain that brown sugar yields soft and moist cookies. Well, brown sugar works that same magic in banana bread, too. It also adds wonderful flavor.
- Eggs: Eggs supply cakes, cupcakes, breads, doughs, and cookies their stability and structure, as well as a tender texture. You’ll need 2 large eggs for this.
- Sour Cream or Yogurt: Sour cream or yogurt adds even more moisture to this banana bread. (You can use the 2 interchangeably in most baking recipes.)
For banana nut bread, add 3/4 cup of chopped nuts to the banana bread batter; I like using either pecans or walnuts. If you’re nuts for nuts (LOL), you’ll enjoy the toasty slight crunch nestled inside the soft crumbs. If you’re not a nut person, feel free to leave them out or replace with chocolate chips. For a whole wheat version, try my whole wheat banana bread. Or for a chocolate version, try my double chocolate banana bread.
Can I Use Frozen Bananas?
Yes and I do this often. Thaw the frozen bananas at room temperature. Drain off any excess liquid, mash, then use as instructed in the recipe below. See How to Freeze & Thaw Bananas for Baking. Try not to mash too much or else you’ll be left with 1 and 1/2 cups of banana-y liquid; some chunks are great.
Can I Turn This Into a Banana Bundt Cake?
I recommend using my extremely similar, scaled-up recipe for chocolate marble banana Bundt cake instead. You can leave out the chocolate swirl in that recipe.
How to Freeze Banana Bread
Freeze banana bread using these instructions to preserve its fresh flavor and texture for months:
- Cool baked banana bread completely.
- Tightly wrap the loaf or slices (individually or grouped) in 2–3 layers of plastic wrap or aluminum foil.
- Place wrapped banana bread in a large freezer-friendly storage bag or reusable container.
- Date the bag and freeze for up to 3–4 months. Thaw wrapped or unwrapped in the refrigerator or at room temperature. All methods work like a charm!
I like to freeze the quick bread in slices because slices thaw much quicker than a whole loaf.
Overall, this is an easy recipe for classic banana bread. The batter takes about 10 minutes to throw together, the bread stays moist for days, and nothing beats the smell of fresh banana bread in the oven. (Except for, maybe, zucchini bread or pumpkin bread… try those next!)
Other Favorite Banana Recipes:
- Banana Cake & Banana Cupcakes
- Cinnamon Swirl Banana Bread
- Banana Cream Pie & Banoffee Pie
- Banana Muffins or Healthier Chocolate Banana Muffins & Blueberry Banana Muffins
- Banana Chocolate Chip Streusel Muffins
- Baked Banana Oatmeal
- Peanut Butter Banana Muffins
My Favorite Banana Bread
- Prep Time: 10 minutes
- Cook Time: 65 minutes
- Total Time: 3 hours
- Yield: 1 loaf
- Category: Bread
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American
Description
With its super-moist and buttery texture, banana and brown sugar flavors, soft crumb, and 1,000+ reviews, this is a delicious AND undeniably popular banana bread recipe. You need 4 large ripe bananas. This recipe is also in my cookbook, Sally’s Baking 101.
Ingredients
- 2 cups (250g) all-purpose flour (spooned & leveled)
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/2 cup (8 Tbsp; 113g) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
- 3/4 cup (150g) packed light or dark brown sugar
- 2 large eggs, at room temperature
- 1 and 1/2 cups (345g) mashed bananas (about 3–4 ripe bananas)
- 1/3 cup (80g) plain Greek yogurt or full-fat sour cream, at room temperature
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- optional: 3/4 cup (90g) chopped pecans or walnuts, or 1 cup (180g) semi-sweet chocolate chips
Instructions
- Adjust the oven rack to the lower third position and preheat the oven to 350°F (177°C). Lowering the oven rack prevents the top of your bread from browning too much, too soon. Grease a 9×5-inch loaf pan with nonstick spray. Set aside.
- In a medium bowl, whisk the flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon together. Set aside.
- In a large bowl using a handheld or stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the butter and brown sugar together on medium-high speed until light and creamy, about 3 minutes. (Here’s a helpful tutorial if you need guidance on how to cream butter and sugar.) With the mixer running on medium speed, add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed. Beat in the mashed bananas, yogurt/sour cream, and vanilla until combined.
- Add the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and beat on low speed just until combined. Do not over-mix. Fold in the nuts/chocolate chips, if using. The batter should be thick.
- Pour and spread the batter into the prepared baking pan. Bake for 60–65 minutes, making sure to loosely cover the pan with aluminum foil halfway through, to prevent the top from getting too brown. The bread is done when a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean with only a few small moist crumbs. Cool the bread in the pan set on a cooling rack for 1 hour. Remove the bread from the pan and place it directly on the rack to cool completely before slicing and serving.
- Store wrapped tightly at room temperature for up to 3 days or in the refrigerator for up to 1 week.
Notes
- Special Tools (affiliate links): 9×5-inch Loaf Pan | Electric Mixer (Handheld or Stand) | Glass Mixing Bowls | Whisk | Silicone Spatula | Cooling Rack
- Update in 2025: With enough reader feedback stating the bread can often be too moist and dense, and therefore not bake properly, my team and I retested the bread multiple times over the past 2 years; we slightly reduced the amount of mashed bananas from 2 cups to 1 and 1/2 cups.
- Butter: If needed, you can use salted butter in this recipe with no other changes needed. I’ve also successfully reduced the butter down to 6 Tablespoons (85g) with no issue (just as tasty).
- Brown Sugar: This is not an overly sweet quick bread. If you want a sweeter banana bread, increase to 1 cup (200g) brown sugar. Feel free to replace some or all of the brown sugar with regular white granulated sugar.
- Cream Cheese Frosting: This banana bread also tastes fantastic with cream cheese frosting on top! To make it, beat 4 ounces (112g) of softened cream cheese and 1/4 cup (60g) of softened unsalted butter together on medium speed until smooth. Beat in 1 cup (120g) of confectioners sugar, 1/2 teaspoon of pure vanilla extract, and a pinch of salt until combined. Spread on cooled loaf.
- Banana Bread Muffins: Use this banana bread recipe to make 15 banana bread muffins. Spoon the batter into a lined or greased muffin pan (fill each to the top with batter) and bake for 5 minutes at 425°F (218°C); then, keeping the muffins in the oven, reduce the oven temperature to 350°F (177°C). Bake for an additional 16–17 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. The total bake time for the banana bread muffins is about 21–23 minutes. The initial burst of hot air helps those muffins rise nice and tall! Or try my quick & easy banana muffins.
- Brown Sugar: Feel free to substitute the same amount of regular white granulated sugar or coconut sugar. I do not recommend any liquid sweeteners.
- No Sour Cream or Yogurt? Feel free to use 1/3 cup mashed banana (in addition to what is called for in the recipe), unsweetened applesauce, or even canned pumpkin puree.
- Frozen Bananas: You can use frozen bananas here. Thaw the frozen bananas. Drain off any excess liquid, mash, then use as instructed in the recipe. See How to Freeze & Thaw Bananas for Baking. Try not to mash too much or else you’ll be left with banana-y liquid; some chunks are great.
- Chocolate Chips: I love this bread with chocolate chips, too. Feel free to add 1 cup of your favorite chocolate chips. No need to leave out the nuts if you add the chocolate chips. Chocolate chips and nuts are both optional.
- Can I Turn This Into Banana Bundt Cake? There isn’t enough batter. I recommend using my extremely similar, scaled-up recipe for chocolate marble banana Bundt cake instead. You can leave out the chocolate swirl in that recipe.
Reader Comments and Reviews
My recipe is similar to yours except I have never used yogurt or sour cream. I will try it next time but really just depends on what I in my fridge lol. 3 bananas are fine if they are decent sized. Used to sometimes overfill my loaf pan and then have trouble cooking thoroughly but as long as I only fill pan and leave an an inch from top it cooks through. Loaf pans can run different sizes so I stick to this rule rather than an exact amount.
This recipe is a keeper. I haven’t been a big fan of banana breads unless they involve chocolate..my husband says that chocolate is a no no in banana bread…so I gave this one a try. It is delicious, even without a morsel of chocolate.
Hi Joslyn, I did it with 3 bananas only but reduced the flour to 225g. Not sure if this is the correct way but the banana bread turned out very well. I love it!
Baked for the 65 minutes but it was still raw in the center. First time baker, so I’m not sure what I did wrong.
Hi Carlos! This is a large bread recipe and all ovens are different – we recommend baking until a toothpick comes out with just a few moist crumbs when inserted into the center of the bread – you can check every 5 minutes or so until the bread is done. Thank you so much for giving this banana bread a try!
Love this recipe! This is the 3rd time using it and this time I made banana blueberry pecan bread! It was so yummy!
Simple, delicious recipe. Doubled the ingredients and turned a large bunch of “too far gone” bananas into two gorgeous loaves!
This is a great recipe!!! I absolutely love it
Fast and simple to make. The icing puts it over the top. I will probably catch some heat for this next statement but this replaces my Grandmas family recipe. Do not worry Grams your pecan and banana cream pie are still the best.
This is by far the best banana bread recipe. I add chocolate chips and bake in muffin tins. My grandsons devour them as soon as they come out of the oven.
I love the way it is, I add chocolate chips .
Tried few recipe of banana bread/ cake but so far this has been my favourite.
Love this recipe. Converted it to Gluten-Free and it held up really well. ❤️ Also toddler friendly, the measuring, mashing and egg cracking made my 22 month old’s morning. ☺️☺️
I used Bobs 1:1 gluten-free baking mix. It almost always works well!! You may want to add xantham gum, but I usually skip it.
I am usually a fan of your recipes but this banana bread did not work for me. I almost found it a bit too complicated without yielding a better result. I had most trouble with the bake time. For most recipes I’ve tried, an hour was enough at the same temperature you’re using but for this recipe, I added at least an extra 15mins but it still wouldn’t bake through. I just gave up in the end.
I love this recipe and have made it a few times now but am wondering about ways to potentially make it fluffier/less dense at the bottom. Can I separate the eggs and fold the whites in at the end or is that not recommended (beginner here, I know that technique works with cakes but not sure about it with this). Any advice is welcome!
Hi Erin! We don’t recommend folding in the egg whites at the end. If the bread is dense, it sounds under-baked. If you decide to try again, we recommend baking for longer. Also be careful to just mix the batter until combined – over-mixing can lead to dense bread. Hope this helps!
I have NEVER EVER made banana bread that has tasted as good as this!!! This will be my forever recipe ❤️ Not too sweet and moist! Thank you ❤️
This was first time I tried banana bread and everyone loved it! Thank you so much for recipe and helpful hints!
Best banana bread recipe I’ve come across,and I’ve tried a few
Hi, I wanted to ask a few things with banana bread. How do you get that crack on the center, I couldn’t get it with mine. Is it related to a high temperature at the beginning? And mine came out a bit chewy on the top brown layer – is it because of over-mixing or baking too long or I should have added a foil on top earlier? I baked at 350 for 35 mins.
Hi Veronica! Large quick breads can get a large crack in the center from the air escaping from the bread as it bakes, but it doesn’t always happen. Chewy bread can definitely be from over mixing, but if it seems to be dry and chewy, the issue may be from the top being over-baked. Tenting with foil earlier would help with that. Thank you so much for giving this banana bread recipe a try!
I made this bread today . Since I had run out of brown sugar used a mix of dermarara and white sugar , powdered . Mixed in 1/3 cup of chopped almonds , cashew nuts and raisins. I did not cover the bread since I had missed reading that. It was done in 58 mins. It came out a pale gold colour. Was sweet enough since I changed the sugar. Will definitely make it again.
Forgot to add the 5 stars
Made this tonight but used whole meal flour and added the chopped bananas to the whipped sugar and butter and whipped them up before adding the eggs. Love love this recipe! Thank you
Hi!I was wondering if I can substitute vegetable oil for the butter, and in case how should I incorporate it in the procedure? And can I reduce the sugar, or the recipe would result being too liquid? Thank| you
Hi Chiara, we don’t recommend subbing vegetable oil for the butter here — the bread will taste rubbery without the fat from the butter. We haven’t tried it ourselves, but you could try using melted coconut oil instead (taste and texture would be different). Sugar is used for moisture and texture in baked goods as well as taste. You can certainly try reducing the sugar, but the resulting texture will be different than intended. You might also enjoy our Whole Wheat Banana Bread instead!
I’ve tried many banana breads in the past and I would say this is my first successful one in terms of taste, texture, moisture, density, appearance, etc. It is so delicious and every part of it baked thoroughly. I added chocolate chips and absolutely it’s amazing.
I am making this now and used strawberry banana greek yogurt. Using my pyrex deep dish pie pan. I will let you know tomorrow what my husband says…..
Delicious! Will definitely be making again
Made this for my family and we all loved it! It’s definitely a keeper and now my go to banana bread recipe. Oh my God… I love it. Thanks for sharing
I found this recipe to be good, but would slightly increase the sugar, or add some white sugar. I would like this to be a little sweeter. I’ll keep the recipe, just tweak it a bit
Super yummy! If you want a quite sweet banana bread then you will need to up the sugar or add white sugar, but for me who loves that it taste a bit more healthy this combo is perfect. Mine came out a little bit too doughy but also something I do not mind. Will definitely make this again!
So I made this recipe, and it’s yummy, but I had one problem – once I added that yogurt, the wet ingredients separated and I’m not sure why… Any ideas?
Hi Tiffany, that can happen and it’s nothing to worry about. It’s a result of the varying textures trying to combine together, whether or not they are all at room temperature. The batter comes together once you add the dry ingredients (flour mixture).
Made these as muffins and added 1 cup of Heath toffee chips, excellent recipe, thank you!
LOVE your review, Tamra Demko, so I’m making this banana bread recipe right now!!! I have a feeling you and I could be besties lol.