Homemade Whole Wheat Banana Pecan Bread

What to do with those ripe bananas...make banana bread! Been looking for a good banana bread recipe and somewhere someone suggested this one. The recipe is from Saveur.com but I've rewritten it here as well with my substitutes.

Whole Wheat Banana Pecan Bread

Mom's Banana  Bread Recipe:
Butter, for greasing pan
1 cup flour, plus more for dusting pan  (or whole wheat pastry flour)
3/4 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. kosher salt  (or sea salt)
1 cup sugar  (or brown sugar use 3/4cup if you don't like things too sweet)
1/2 cup canola oil
1/3 cup buttermilk (or soy milk)
1 tsp. vanilla
1 egg plus 1 egg yolk
2/3 cup chopped pecans
3 very ripe  bananas, mashed

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9"x5"x2 3/4" loaf pan with butter and dust with flour; set pan aside.
2. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt; set aside.
3. Whisk together sugar, oil, buttermilk, vanilla, egg, and egg yolk in a medium bowl until smooth. Pour wet ingredients over dry ingredients and whisk until just combined. Add pecans and mashed bananas and whisk gently to combine. Pour batter into prepared pan and bake until golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the middle of the loaf comes out clean, 60–65 minutes. Let cool for 30 minutes before slicing and serving.

The substitutions made are written in green. I like to use whole wheat pasty flour for cakes because it's softer than regular whole wheat flour. I also don't have buttermilk handy, but I do have soy milk at home. So I would say to just use whatever kind of milk you have handy. I also used less than a cup of sugar because I don't like things that are too sweet. All in all, I think it came out pretty good! It may not be as rich and creamy without the buttermilk, but I still think it's pretty darn good! It's kind of like cake because it's not doughy at all. So next time you have extra ripe bananas at home, make some banana bread. (You don't have to use my version of course.)

Chef Hung Taiwanese Beef Noodle 洪師父牛肉麵 - Irvine, CA

Cold day = warm soup noodles. Not today, but the day that these were eaten was a cold day....or I'd like to think it was. Noodles are my favorite. I prefer noodles over rice and bread. Yup yup, I'm a noodle person. So I've been meaning to try Chef Hung's noodles, but have been waiting for the insanity of a new place to go away...and for them to iron out their kinks. It also helped that we decided to go eat at around 4PM on a Saturday when it's not really meal time. 

Seasonal Vegetable with Noodle in Soup

Being a vegetarian my choice of noodle soup was limited to the vegetable noodles. You can pick what type of noodles you want. I picked "flat" noodles thinking they were like linguine but they came out to be what I would call "wide" noodles. They had "thin" noodles...making me think they were like angel hair but those were the type I actually wanted. Darnit! Oh well. The wide...I mean flat noodles were nice and chewy. Very QQ! But too much noodle for me. The thickest I like is the linguine type and anything smaller than that. Yeah, I don't really like udon noodles because it's so thick. So if you're like me and you like smaller noodles, go with the "thin" noodles. They're not really thin, they're like linguine. All in all, it was pretty good. Not TOO expensive like people were saying. It was only $7 for my veggie noodles. Maybe they lowered their prices? I wouldn't know since this was my first time there.

Now, is this broth actually vegetarian? I'm not sure. I did ask the server and he said that it was. BUT at first he said the broth was stewed with bones and that you can't taste it. So I then asked for a vegetarian broth which I thought was the tomato. Then when my dish came out, there was just tomato sauce on top of the soup (because it was too late and the dish already made) and he told me to mix it and said that there was no meat in it. Hmmm....so I think they LIE and tell you it's vegetarian when it really isn't cuz you can't taste it anyway! But you know what...you can taste something that you normally don't taste if you just drink the broth and don't eat any food with it. In any case, I at least didn't get sick. Perhaps if I had asked for the vegetarian broth in the beginning, it would've been different. Oh well, there are other side dishes you can eat besides the noodles and perhaps I'll try those out if I go back next time.

If anyone has any info on their broths for vegetarians, please let me know! Maybe I just changed my order too late and should have said vegetarian broth in the beginning. Thanks!

Chef Hung Taiwanese Beef Noodle 洪師父牛肉麵
http://www.chefhungnoodle.com/eng/index.html
Diamond Jamboree Shopping Center
2710 Alton Parkway, Suite 117
Irvine, CA 92606

Homemade Cinnamon Raisin Whole Wheat Bread

Had a hankering to have some cinnamon raisin bread...but I didn't want white bread, and I couldn't find any whole wheat ones...they're usually half wheat half white flour. So anyway, this was my first attempt at some type of bread due to a craving. That's the best reason to learn to make something right?

Wheat Dough

Dough after it's been kneaded and rested. It didn't really rise a whole lot, so I didn't put a before and after picture.

Rolled out dough with cinnamon sugar and raisins

Dough was flattened and rolled out into a rectangular shape. Sprinkled it with cinnamon sugar and lots of raisins.

Resting Dough in Pan

Dough was rolled up into a log and placed inside the pan to rest. I am using a cast-iron pan as I have heard good things about it's crust when baked in such a pan.

Risen Dough

Dough has risen and been brushed with oil. You can see that it is indeed puffier than before.

Baked Loaf

After baking in the oven, it's a nice golden color, even more so than white bread of course.

Cinnamon Raisin Wheat Bread

The finished product. There are so many raisins that it kept falling out. Heh heh...oh well, the more the yummier right?

I am not putting a recipe because the result was not so good. I basically just found it on food network's website. You can experiment from there. It was originally a white dough recipe. So here's some things I've learned. For breads to rise, you need gluten. Whole wheat pastry flour has very little gluten, which is what I used because it's what I had at home. Therefore, my dough came out kind of....well doughy. Hence why it didn't come out so great...it didn't really rise a whole lot. =( The crust was crunchy tho. Anyway, this was a good learning experience. More experiments with wheat dough to come.