Martha Stewart’s Secret Ingredient for the Best Banana Bread

Some people avoid the speckled brown and yellow bananas at the grocery store, but not me. I make a beeline straight for them because I love making banana bread. I consider it a perfect food and I’m always looking for delicious ways to enjoy it. While I typically rely on at least four or five super ripe bananas as my “trick” for perfect banana bread, I recently learned about Martha Stewart’s secret for making banana bread, and it has nothing to do with bananas.

Quick Bread Ingredients

Quick bread recipes utilize many of the same basic ingredients, including flour, eggs, a leavener like baking powder, a liquid (often milk), and sweetener. They all work together to create the tender, flavorful loaves you love. These breads are “quick” because unlike yeasted breads that require time to rise, quick breads can be mixed and then baked right away. Each ingredient plays a specific role to contribute to structure and flavor, but like with all good recipes, there’s always room to play. That brings us to Martha's key banana bread ingredient: sour cream.

Moist Banana Bread

Why Sour Cream?

While maybe not a traditional ingredient in your average banana bread recipe, adding sour cream like Martha Stewart does makes sense. Chef Susan Reid, author of the well plated life, explains that sour cream can be a good swap for the oil or butter in the recipe since it contains not just fat, but protein and acid, which help reinforce the bread’s structure. Besides playing a structural role, it also contributes a tangy flavor, which balances the sweetness of fully ripe bananas, she says. So adding sour cream creates a bread with outstanding texture that's easy to slice. What’s not to love about that?

How To Add Sour Cream To Your Favorite Banana Bread Recipe

If your recipe doesn’t call for sour cream, don’t worry: it’s an easy swap. Reid suggests adding 3/4 cup full-fat sour cream and then decreasing the butter or oil by 1/4 cup and the bananas by 1/2 cup. As for when to incorporate it, Reid recommends mixing it in when the bananas are added, following the baker’s strategy of “keeping wet with wet, and dry with dry.” Finally, for best results if using butter in your recipe, use room temperature sour cream. This promotes the emulsification of the ingredients needed to create a smooth, aerated batter perfect for baking up a satisfying loaf.

There are plenty of ways to get creative with quick breads, but the addition of sour cream produces an easy-slicing moist loaf that’s balanced in flavor. It’s a secret ingredient that makes any quick bread recipe, especially banana bread, better.