Banana Bread

This is derived from Cooks' Illustrated excellent banana bread recipe, but I've made some substitution suggestions of my own.

• 2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour (sub in up to half whole-wheat flour for a more toothsome crumb)
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar (raw or turbinado sugar helps, or sub in half dark brown sugar)
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon table salt
• 1 1/4 cups toasted walnuts, chopped coarse (optional; sub 1 cup bittersweet chocolate chips if desired. Semisweet chips are too sweet for me in this and most other contexts, but you do what you feel is right.)

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• 3 very ripe bananas, soft, darkly speckled, mashed well
• 1/4 cup plain yogurt
• 2 large eggs, beaten a little
• 6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Melt the butter and set out to cool a little. Mash your bananas, crack the two eggs into a bowl and beat them a little. Preheat oven to 350°. No, really, go fire it up. This bread comes together quickly.

Combine first five (dry) ingredients in a large bowl; combine second five ingredients in a medium bowl and then fold into the dry ingredients with a rubber spatula, just until combined. Watch out for flour streaks! (I've tried making this using a mixer, and I've actually found that I like the rougher texture I get from hand-mixing this bread. Live a little!)

Grease and flour just the bottom of a regular loaf pan and pour in the batter. I call it "batter" rather than "dough," because let's face it: this is a cake, not bread. Bake for about 65 minutes (usually a little more) until a toothpick or sharp knife plunged into the center of the bread comes out clean.

Allow to cool for 5-10 minutes in the pan, then unmold it and cool on a wire rack for at least 20-30 minutes. Otherwise (and I speak from delicious personal experience, here) you will try to cut a slice of the still-hot bread and wind up irretrievably mangling the whole thing.