By Iron Chef Leftovers

I don’t have a great ego when it comes to cooking, but I am pretty good at it. Contrary to what some people think, I really couldn’t be a professional chef nor would I want to – I enjoy cooking and it is my relaxation. Baking on the other hand is not something I am good at – where I excel in cooking a savory dish is that I know how flavors work together, I can improvise and improve a recipe on the fly and I can adjust the dish during the cooking process to correct it, baking it’s the opposite. I hate that you can’t tell if you got it right until the finished product comes out of the oven and by that point it is too late to do anything about it. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the science behind baking and why ingredients do what they do, but I hate the lack of improvisation that baking delivers.

Why do I mention this, well up until a few weeks ago, my greatest culinary failure had been a tiramisu that I forgot to add the egg whites. I realized this after I put the entire thing together, when it was too late to add the egg whites, but fortunately, I was able to save it by putting in some cream and running it though an ice cream machine and I ended up with tiramisu ice cream. It turned out to be edible at least.

A few weeks ago, I had a few bananas that were well past being edible (they were black), perfect for banana bread. I remembered there was a really easy recipe for it on cooksillustrated.com, so I went there to grab it. Instead of printing it out, I wrote down the ingredients. Unfortunately, Mrs. Iron Chef came home as I was doing this and I got distracted. I picked up where I left off and this is what I wrote down:

I looked at the ingredients list and thought it looked a little strange, but I figured that it was right, so I proceeded to put everything together and bake the bread. It smells wonderful in the house the entire time it is baking. After and hour I check for doneness and pull it out of the oven and think, it looks a little odd. I finally pull it out of the pan and onto the rack and think, it looks really flat. I let it cool, it settles and looks like this:

I know at this point I screwed it up. I taste it and it tastes good, but the bread is so dense that it is practically inedible. You could probably build a house with this thing it is so dense.

So what did I screw up? I left out one simple but very important ingredient – the leavening agent, in this case, baking soda. The leavening is what causes baked goods to rise by adding gas to the batter as it cooked. When you don’t you get something that is dense enough to collapse in on itself and form a black hole.

In case you are wondering, here is the actual recipe, and I do recommend it. It is quick to assemble and produces pretty good banana bread. From cooksillustrted.com:

Makes one 9-inch loaf

Greasing and flouring only the bottom of a regular loaf pan causes the bread to cling to the sides and rise higher. If using a nonstick loaf pan, on which the sides are very slick, grease and flour sides as well as the bottom.

Ingredients

* 2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
* 3/4 cup granulated sugar
* 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
* 1/2 teaspoon table salt
* 1 1/4 cups toasted walnuts , chopped coarse (about 1 cup)
* 3 very ripe bananas , soft, darkly speckled, mashed well (about 1 1/2 cups)
* 1/4 cup plain yogurt
* 2 large eggs , beaten lightly
* 6 tablespoons unsalted butter , melted and cooled
* 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions

1. Adjust oven rack to lower middle position and heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease bottom only of regular loaf pan, or grease and flour bottom and sides of nonstick 9-by-5-by-3-inch loaf pan; set aside. Combine first five ingredients together in large bowl; set aside.

2. Mix mashed bananas, yogurt, eggs, butter, and vanilla with wooden spoon in medium bowl. Lightly fold banana mixture into dry ingredients with rubber spatula until just combined and batter looks thick and chunky. Scrape batter into prepared loaf pan; bake until loaf is golden brown and toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, about 55 minutes. Cool in pan for 5 minutes, then transfer to wire rack. Serve warm or at room temperature.