Loaf 2: the same loaf without the banana

This is Loaf 2 of 16. One thing changed from Loaf 1: the banana came out and 165 g of water went in. Nothing else moved, including the leavening.

That last part is not an accident. Most banana bread is leavened with baking soda, and soda needs an acid to react with. In banana bread the acid is the banana. If Loaf 1 had used soda, taking the banana out would have silently forced a second change to the leavening, and the loaf would have been a lie. Baking powder carries its own acid, so it survives this loaf untouched.

The four things that never move

Still frozen, and frozen for the whole course: 400 g flour, 8 g salt (2%), one 9 x 5 inch (23 x 13 cm) loaf pan, 375°F / 190°C.

The formula

Hydration: 60% (240 g water on 400 g flour)

Look at the hydration line. It is the same 60% as Loaf 1. That is the whole reason the water figure is 165 g and not 220 g, and it is worth a sentence of its own.

Method

1. Heat the oven to 375°F / 190°C. Grease the pan.
2. Whisk the water, eggs, sugar and oil together.
3. Whisk the flour, salt and baking powder in a second bowl.
4. Combine, stirring only until the last dry streak goes.
5. Bake at 375°F / 190°C for 55 to 65 minutes. Cool as before.

Why this works

The banana was doing four separate jobs, and this loaf takes all four away at once while replacing only one of them.

It was carrying 165 g of water. It was adding sugar. It was adding pectin, a plant fiber that grabs water and holds it in the crumb, which is why banana bread stays moist for days. And it was adding flavor.

Put back only the water and the loaf tells you what the other three were worth.

Here is the arithmetic that makes the swap honest. Ripe banana is 75% water, so 220 g of banana was never 220 g of water. It was 165 g of water and 55 g of banana solids. Replacing banana gram for gram with water would have poured 55 g of water into the loaf that the loaf never had, which would have pushed hydration up and turned this loaf into a soup. Then you would be tasting two changes at once and learning nothing from either.

This is the bookkeeping that runs the whole course: when an ingredient that is mostly water leaves, you put back the water it was carrying, not its weight.

How you know it's ready

There are two looks on this loaf, one before the oven and one after.

Before: the batter falls off the spoon in a thick ribbon that mounds and then slowly settles flat. That is what this formula looks like when it is mixed correctly and not overmixed.

After: a skewer comes out clean of wet batter and the center reads 200 to 205°F / 93 to 96°C. Usually 55 to 65 minutes at 375°F / 190°C, and as always the time is context for the look.

What goes wrong

The failure this loaf introduces: a dense, slightly wet band along the bottom of the loaf.

One cause: the batter sat on the counter waiting for the oven.

Baking powder spends part of its lift the moment it gets wet. A batter that waits 20 minutes on a room-temperature counter has already thrown that gas away, and what is left cannot hold the heavier bottom of the loaf up. The wet band is the bottom third settling back down on itself before the crumb set.

The fix is sequencing, not technique. Have the oven at 375°F / 190°C before you combine the wet and the dry. Grease the pan first too. Then nothing between mixing and baking takes longer than scraping the bowl.

When it worked

The same shape and the same soft crumb as Loaf 1, browned a shade lighter because the banana's own sugars are gone, and it tastes like a plain sweet cake. Pleasant, and noticeably emptier.

That gap is the point. It is banana's flavor, measured by subtraction, and it is the first thing this course actually teaches you. You did not read that the banana matters. You ate the difference.

Bake it twice before you move on to Loaf 3, where the sugar comes out. One good loaf is luck. Two in a row is a skill.