Banana bread

The short answer

Banana bread is a quick bread: it rises with baking soda or baking powder instead of yeast, so it goes from bowl to oven in a few minutes.¹

It is older than you might think. Bananas reached the United States in the 1870s, and banana bread was on sale in Lawrence, Kansas, by January 1881.¹ Recipes only became common in American cookbooks in the 1930s, once baking powder was easy to buy, with versions published by Better Homes and Gardens, the United Fruit Company and Pillsbury.^1,3 Historians still argue over whether it was thrifty Depression-era baking or clever marketing by flour and baking soda companies.¹

The brown bananas matter. As a banana ripens, its starch turns into sugar. When America's Test Kitchen baked loaves with bananas at different stages, the very ripe ones gave the sweetest, moistest and most banana-flavoured bread, while yellow or green bananas made a drier loaf they described as "vegetal" and "astringent".²

In spring 2020 it became the comfort bake of lockdown: for 30 days it was the most searched-for recipe in every US state, with searches up 54%.³

Every fact here links to its source. Last checked 7 October 2026.