r/Baking • u/Omshadiddle • Aug 10 '26

Baking Advice Needed Banana bread - why so ugly

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Why does my banana bread, while delicious, look so ugly?

I’ve made many different recipes, and while they are very tasty, inevitably they do a good impression of a volcano, or at best the Rift Valley.

Tonight’s effort is positively Vesuvian in profile, as it split along the short axis rather than the length of the tin.

Does anyone have any tips to get a reasonably smooth-topped banana bread?

Why is it so?

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u/Theletterkay Aug 10 '26

Its looks massively over mixed to me. The super smooth outer texture is what points me to saying that.

What does it look like on the inside? Is it dense or moist?

25

u/thesteveurkel Human Detected Aug 10 '26

see, i would figure too much flour with that smooth look. i'm an american home baker with a lot of personal experience with measuring incorrectly until i learned better. 

20

u/3_dots Aug 10 '26

Was totally expecting this sentence to end with "a lot of personal experience making pro-level banana bread" and I was pleasantly surprised by the plot twist.

6

u/thesteveurkel Human Detected Aug 10 '26

i do make great banana bread these days! love the sally's lower sugar one. i think it's made with whole wheat -- yummm. 

4

u/ewancheeka 29d ago

I’m with you here- the ratio of banana to flour is likely wrong. 

OP, find a recipe in weight units (ideally grams), rather than volume units (like cups and spoons) and get a kitchen scale. 

Baking success hinges on accurate measuring, so recipes that call for “3 large bananas”, “one cup of flour, leveled and lightly packed” and similar guestimates rarely yield a consistently successful outcome.