Banana Bread
A popular offering for morning or afternoon “come over for coffee,” back before Mom went to work at Lignell’s. (Sometimes she’d make both banana bread and nut bread). She sliced it very thin, then cut each slice in half and lined them up in a cascade down the middle of a serving plate. Bridgeman’s provided a ready supply of over-ripe bananas and banana bread baking made the whole downstairs smell wonderful. It’s the first recipe I remember making on my own when I had my apartment in Madison, probably because I wanted it to smell like home.
2 large or 4 small very ripe (almost black) bananas Peel and mash them in a bowl; set aside
Make sour milk: put 1/4 cup milk in a drinking glass (at least 8 oz) Add 1 tsp. vinegar; stir and set aside
Mix together 1/2 cup butter or margarine (room temp) with 1 1/2 cups of sugar in a mixer or use a hand mixer.
The original recipe says cream together, but I’ve never gotten this much sugar to be creamy with 1/2 cup butter)
Add two eggs, (Before breaking the shells, put them in a bowl in the sink and run hot water over them for a couple of minutes—gently—so you don’t break the shells—to take the chill off the eggs before you add them to the butter-sugar mixture. Beat—then it should have more of a creamy consistency. Add the mashed bananas; beat until they’re mixed in. Add 1 tsp. baking soda to the sour milk; stir. It should foam up almost to the top of the glass. If it doesn’t, dump out the sour milk mixture and start again. You may need to warm the milk a bit; if it doesn’t foam when you add the baking soda, the banana bread won’t rise.
Add a little of the foamy sour milk to the banana mixture, beat it in, then add 2 1/4 cups flour; add the flour in three batches, alternate with the sour milk mixture, so that you add flour last. At the very end, add 1/2 cup-1 cup chopped walnuts if you like.
Pour into a greased and floured bread pan. Bake at 350 for at least an hour. Test for doneness by poking the center with the blade of a thin knife or toothpick; if it comes out clean, it’s done. Sometimes it takes a lot longer to bake; keep testing every five minutes. Cool in the bread pan for 10 minutes, then turn the bread onto a rack. Best when made a day ahead. The loaf keeps, wrapped in plastic, for a week to 10 days if stored in the refrigerator.