Recipe from the back of the Gold Medal All Purpose Flour bag and truly the best!
Time: 1 hour 30 minutes
Ingredients:
- 1 1/4 cups sugar
- 1/2 cup butter, softened
- 2 eggs
- 1 1/2 cups mashed very ripe bananas (3 to 4 medium)
- 1/2 cup buttermilk
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 2 1/2 cups flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup finely chopped nuts, if desired
- 1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips, if desired
Directions: Move oven rack to low position so that tops of pans will be in center of oven. Heat oven to 350°F. Grease bottoms only of 2 loaf pans, 8 1/2×4 1/2×2 1/2 inches, or 1 loaf pan, 9x5x3 inches. You can also line your loaf pan with parchment paper as well if you’d like. I like to use a piece of parchment paper that fits on a half sheet tray that I then cut in half. It should fit perfectly in a 9×5 loaf pan and the edges will come all the way up the sides so you’ll have a hammock type situation to get the bread out of the loaf pan easily without having to invert it.
Mix sugar and butter in large bowl. Stir in eggs until well blended. Add bananas, buttermilk and vanilla. Beat until smooth. Stir in flour, baking soda and salt just until moistened. Stir in nuts. Pour into pans.
Bake 8-inch loaves about 1 hour, 9-inch loaf about 1 1/4 hours, or until toothpick or cake tester inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes. Loosen sides of loaves from pans; remove from pans and place top side up on wire rack. Cool completely, about 2 hours, before slicing. Wrap tightly and store at room temperature up to 4 days, or refrigerate up to 10 days.