Banana Goodness

I've been on the quest for a good banana bread for a long time.  Even before the allergies hit, to be honest.  I eat a lot of bananas, but I don't always manage to eat them all in time.  My freezer fills up with bags of banana chunks, or, if I'm especially pressed for time, bunches of whole bananas which have turned black from the cold.  (Which doesn't in any way impact the fruit inside).  I need something to do with these bananas, and banana bread is one of my favourite foods.  My mom used to make a fabulous banana bread when I was growing up, sweetened with honey and pureed dates and made with whole wheat flour instead of white.  It was healthy enough that she let me eat it for breakfast, which was the ultimate treat (cereal can get quite monotonous!)  But it's hard to puree dates without a blender, so I always knew I was going to have to find a new recipe.

Last summer, in my very brief spelt-flour baking stage, and in search of a recipe I could make for a baking-deprived diet-restricted friend, I discovered an absolutely fantastic recipe for banana bread.  It won me great accolades, and because it was vegan, whole-grain, high in flax and had no refined sugar, I deemed it healthy enough to eat at any time of day.  However, it didn't take long after that before my body to remind me that spelt was very definitely not gluten-free.  I spent months searching for a replacement recipe, and made some absolutely horrid banana breads along the way.  (One was flat, burnt, and the middle fell out when I tried to remove it from the pan.  Disaster!)  And then recently, I stumbled upon a wonderful, moist, whole-grain, high-protein, delicious spiced banana muffin recipe.  I'm not picky, I'll take my banana baking in whatever form it comes, and muffins were more than good enough for me.  The recipe claimed to be a cupcake, but I claim it was just banana bread in disguise.

Gluten-Free Baking: Wherefore and Why

There is so much I could say on this topic, and in fact I've been putting off writing this post for two days because the scope of information is so vast it's intimidating.  So, ultimately, I've opted to split this into two posts: the why, and the how. Later on I will follow up with some more concrete science info to back up my assertions & descriptions, but right now I just wanted to touch on the surface of the issue a bit.

So: gluten-free baking.  Why bother?  It's certainly a major challenge: gluten provides the elasticity and binding that most of us take for granted when baking with flour.  It's a double challenge if, like me, you're attempting gluten-free AND vegan baking, because the other food ingredient that traditionally provides elasticity and binding in baked goods is eggs, and I can't eat those either.  But gluten intolerance is becoming a bigger and bigger issue in society today.  For example, when I used to volunteer at a theatre festival selling ice cream, I was frequently asked which  ice cream products were gluten-free.  People were always excited when they realized I actually knew the answer.  And while I now am trying to follow a gluten-free (or at least gluten-low) diet myself, I actually started learning about gluten-free baking so I could bake for gluten-intolerant friends.  So I'm guessing most readers probably know someone in their life who have issues with wheat or gluten.  But before one can go about accommodating these restrictions, it's important to know what exactly your (or your friend's) sensitivity is.