Leftovers, Adjusting Banana Bread

Rob felt that we should eat up the remaining leftovers in the fridge.  This family eats a lot of leftovers.  There was the chicken pot pie and corn on the cob.  To add something new, he sliced up some fresh, ripe field tomatoes (beefsteak variety) and tossed it with balsamic vinegar, olive oil, crushed garlic and some ground black pepper.  We fought over the tomatoes and mopped up the juice with sliced ciabatta bread that had a firm, chewy texture.

One of the things I learned about roughly estimating high and low GI is to put a small amount of a food into your mouth and wait for 30 seconds.  If it is mostly dissolved then it is likely to have a high GI, while foods that don't disintegrate would be lower.  How easy is that?  I am quite certain the bread we had tonight would have passed the test reasonably well.

For dessert, I ate the banana bread I didn't have time for at lunch.  I was quite curious about how it would turn out, because I had scaled up quite a large recipe, and did not have enough bananas.  Since bananas (and applesauce) are often used to substitute for fat, I went the other way and added a small amount of extra oil.  I also upped the sugar content slightly (so much for GI) because it helps keep the product more moist - another property I was missing with less bananas. 

Rant:  Many people cut the sugar in a recipe, and then claim it tastes the same.  This is mostly true, but they often don't realize that the lower sugar content makes their product dry out and go stale more quickly.  For me, the quality of a product involves texture as much as taste.  If one desires less sugar, it would be far better to use a recipe that contains less naturally, or to simply eat less.  I've never agreed with the concept of eating more of a lower calorie food.  I hate that idea.  Better to enjoy every calorie I eat instead.

So did I like the banana bread?  Yes, I did.  I often bake after dinner, and leave the hot loaves out all night to cool.  Sometimes I don't have time to wrap and put them away for almost 24 hours, which then gives the flavours a chance to mature before freezing.  What would I do if my product went stale by then? 

The crumb texture was respectable, considering I had to fool around with a mixture of buttermilk and soured milk, since I was also short of the former.  Buttermilk produces a finer, slightly fluffy crumb.  I needed to be careful because I was using half whole wheat flour as well as 1% dairy products, both of which create a more dense product.  I happen to prefer slightly lighter goods in general.

Okay, maybe it's just a very forgiving recipe.  But I really did think about all of these things while I was busy throwing it together with the children's help.  Unfortunately, they failed to mix it really well, because it was in such a large bowl.  I had to quickly stir some floury bits into the batter as I poured it into the pans.  That lack of necessity for good mixing technique is truly where a recipe can be forgiving, or not.  To me, the calculation of how the ingredients interact is the cook's art.