Gluten-free banana bread experiment

I have turned the chestnut flour into banana bread! I adapted Loving It Vegan’s recipe to make it gluten-free and I made a couple other changes I’ll talk about.

I am not typically a gluten-free baker and I do not know the gluten-free baking secrets. So I just did a one-to-one substitution by weight of chestnut flour for wheat flour. Edit: I have since hunted for some gluten-free baking secrets and I am now astonished that this bread turned out so good. The gluten-free baking secrets are many and success without them I think points to the excellence of chestnut flour

In addition to using chestnut flour, I replaced the coconut oil with Eris Farm Black Walnut Butter. I doubled the amount since after tasting the batter I wanted a stronger black walnut flavor, and black walnut butter is about half fat anyway. I left out the cinnamon so it wouldn’t compete with the black walnut and I left out the walnuts since I already had the black walnut butter involved.

I don’t have much of a sweet tooth so I usually halve the sugar when following baking recipes, but since I was already changing several things I used the full amount. And I guess for full disclosure I doubled the salt because I cook with kosher salt, which is less dense than table salt.

So here’s the ingredients list I ended up using:

• 2 cups chestnut flour (250g)

• 1/2 cup white sugar (100g)

• 1/2 cup brown sugar (100g)

• 1 tbsp baking powder

• 1/2 tsp kosher salt

• 3 mashed ripe bananas

• 1/2 cup soy milk

• 1/2 cup black walnut butter

I made some changes to the process as well because in my kitchen I do what I feel like.

Here are the process changes:

I am in the habit of treating sugar as a wet ingredient, so I mixed it with the other wet ingredients instead of the dry ingredients.

I did not bother to mash the bananas, I just dumped them into the wet ingredient bowl whole and used my hand mixer and it was fine.

I did not use a blender for anything, just the hand mixer.

After an hour in the oven a toothpick came out sticky so I left it in for another 15 minutes.

Results:

Very delicious! I did a dumb thing and failed to grease the bread pan before pouring the batter in, so the bottom of the loaf did remain in the pan when I tipped it onto the cooling rack. But I just scraped it out and ate it immediately while the rest of the loaf was cooling and oh boy it is so good.

The inside stayed pretty soft but the crust is quite substantial. As has been the case with my past gluten-free baking experiments, the top of the loaf stayed flat and didn’t get that pretty crown that glutinous loaves get. I still have most of the chestnut flour left, so perhaps I will try to learn the gluten-free baking secrets as I make more things with it.