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
- 1/3 cup (80g) plain Greek yogurt or full-fat sour cream, at room temperature
- 1 and 1/2 cups (345g) mashed bananas (about 3–4 ripe bananas)
- 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 yogurt, vanilla, and mashed bananas 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 cool it directly on the rack until ready to slice and serve.
- 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
Good recipe! My tweak is to add the grated zest and juice of a lemon, which adds a bit of brightness.
I really loved this! If I were to use whole wheat flour instead, would it also be 2 cups/250g?
Hi Mita, it would be the same amount, but I’d recommend trying it with half all-purpose flour and half whole wheat, instead of all whole wheat. We also have this recipe for whole wheat banana bread you could try instead. Hope it turns out great!
I use this so much with My Family, thank you Sally for all your perfect recipes! 🙂
Always turns out amazing; I use vegan butter and I even used 1/2 mashed avocado once bc I didn’t have any sour cream or yogurt, and it still came out amazing!
Can I make this with coca powder? Would it be a 1:1 substitute for all purpose flour?
Hi JC, we haven’t tried incorporating cocoa powder into this recipe, and unfortunately it’s not always a 1:1 swap. You might enjoy these chocolate banana muffins instead!
My go to banana bread recipe. I add dessicated coconut and chopped chocolate. So good
It is delicious. Best banana bread I’ve ever tasted. Thank you
I absolutely LOVE this recipe. I love that it has no added sugar, it uses yogurt or sour cream. This is my go to banana bread recipe. Backstory on it, my Grandma loves banana bread and when her 90th birthday was approaching I knew I wanted to bake her the best banana bread ever, so I came here to Sally’s baking (I’ve used many of her recipes) found this and have never looked back. My Gram loved her birthday bread! Thanks Sally for making such wonderful recipes.
This is the best recipe because of the extra bananas. One family member has an allergy to cinnamon, so I substitute with a little nutmeg to allow the flavor come thru. Sometimes I split the batch to have one with cinnamon and one with nutmeg. Love adding nuts, raisins, or chocolate chips.
Can’t wait to try this recipe! Just curious, why do you suggest a metal pan versus glass? If you use glass, do you need to make it a different temperature or time?
Hi Nicole, a glass pan will work just fine. Bake time may be a couple minutes longer, but keep a close eye on it and use a toothpick to test for doneness.
Oh my goodness best bread ever! As expected, your recipes never let me down. I added 1/2 a cup of chopped pistachios, some cardamom, cinnamon, and ginger to the recipe, and made a streusel topping (with a little more cardamom) to go on top. So delicious! Banana bread is my absolute favorite. I can’t wait to try more variations on this great recipe!
My go to recipe for banana bread! Absolutely delicious.
Used more bananas and 50% of the sugar, and it’s still very sweet. Also replaced the butter with olive oil. Made mini muffins instead of a loaf. Came out perfect.
I made his banana bread tonight thinking I had all the ingredients, but turns out I did not. I had no yogurt or sour cream, so I substituted the same quantity of milk. One of my bananas was too far gone, so I added half a small can of crushed pineapple which was very tart, so I added an additional 1/4 cup of brown sugar. I sprinkled crystallized sugar on top. I said a prayer, popped it in the oven, and it is awesome! I can’t believe how good it is! Can’t wait to make the real recipe as written, but cudos for a recipe that can be tweaked and still turn out delicious!!
My family absolutely loves this recipe! We used it a few times & it turns out amazing every time, recently doubled it and used 6 frozen thawed bananas, other than that followed exactly as directed. All the tips are so helpful. After trying several recipes I’ve got to say that this is the best! I’ll be sure to send the link to family and friends.
I substituted in a mix of 1 and a half cups of buckwheat flour and half a cup of oat flour to make this recipe gluten free. Absolutely delicious!!!
This is the best banana bread recipe.. ever. Everyone loves it.
Brilliant recipe. I can’t believe I didn’t fail cause I usually do even following a recipe. My brother gave me a massive bunch of bananas from his back yard & I’ve baked 7 loaves in 2 days and they are all 10/10. Thankyou for this recipe.
I loved this! I wanted to up the protein intake and make it GF so I did that!
I subbed 1:1 GF Bob miles flour and then added 4 scoops of collagen protein and a pinch of nutmeg. They turned out delicious! Next time I plan on experimenting with adding oats and nuts!
Second time trying this recipe. Followed it to the letter (weight) and it is simply a bad recipe. Banana bread is easy and this one somehow manages to make it unapproachable. Results; again too dense and sopping with moisture. It does not rise. Woof.
Hi Jess, thank you for giving our recipe a try. If the bread doesn’t rise at all, perhaps your baking soda could be getting old. We find it can lost strength after just a few months.
I was really disappointed unfortunately. Followed the recipe, but it didn’t come together quickly. I had it in the oven 70min and the usual test for doneness didn’t work. I couldn’t leave it in longer as the sides and bottom were done and drying out. I let the bread sit and when I cut into it, there was a tunnel of raw dough about 2 inches wide that ran the length of the loaf. Trying some of the cooked bread, I found it it had a nice banana flavor but was not not sweet enough. Not sure where I went wrong? Been baking for over 50yrs, so feel my skills are solid. Hopefully others will have better luck.
As with all of Sally’s recipes that I try, this one is a keeper for sure. It is a close second to the banana cream pie which my husband proclaimed is better than his mom’s!
Sally never ever lets us down. On round 3 of making another loaf. Easy, moist, delicious. 10/10 (sour cream > yogurt)
I was wondering if I could use vanilla Greek yogurt instead of plain yogurt?
Hi Rebecca, that shouldn’t be a problem here.
I usually love your recipes, but no matter what I do this one comes out WET inside. I’ve tried switching pans, mashing the bananas more or less, I weigh everything, it ALWAYS comes out wet. I always lower the rack and bake as directed. The last time I tried adding 12 minutes to the bake time and ITS STILL WET. I’m so frustrated. Not overmixing, not new to baking, never had this issue with any other banana bread. Usually your recipes work like a charm for me! WHAT am I doing wrong?
With such a thick, moist bread like this, yours may just need extra time to bake. Are you using the toothpick test to check for doneness? The bread is done when a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean with only a few small moist crumbs.
Thanks so much for giving this bread a try—we’d be happy to help troubleshoot. With so much banana and the yogurt/sour cream in the bread, it should guarantee a very moist loaf. Was it perhaps over baked? Over baking (even by just a few minutes) can often dry out baked goods. Be sure to spoon and level (or use a kitchen scale) to measure your flour, too–if it’s over measured, that can also dry out your bread. Hope these tips help for next time!
Thank you Sally! It came out really well and I just followed your recipe!
This was yummy but it took WAY longer to bake & even with tenting with foil after 30 minutes got very dark & crunchy on the top & edges so it needed to be trimmed. ♀️Maybe I will try a lower temp next time but then it will take even longer??!
Fantastic! I made them into square muffins and they are probably the best ones I’ve ever made. Thank you!!
I also love this recipe! Easy to make and very delicious & moist! I made mini muffins with chocolate chip & pecans! My husband favorite since childhood!! I didn’t have to adjust the recipe for high attitude
My grandson requested this bread with blueberries and rolled oats. If I were to, put rolled oats in the bread, would I need to make any adjustments such as increasing the amount of milk? Also, what amount of oats would you suggest? He always comes up with requests to see if I can come through. Little does he know I have your site to rely on! Thank you
Hi Roberta, we haven’t tried adding rolled oats in this bread, but we do have this blueberry oatmeal muffin recipe that can be made in a loaf pan. Let us know if you give it a try!