Posted: · Updated: by Jenny McGruther · This site earns income from ads, affiliate links, and sponsorships.
This einkorn banana bread is rich and dense with bananas, dotted with chopped walnuts and dark chocolate chips. Bananas not only give the bread a rich and pronounced flavor, but also moisture - meaning that the bread's crumb is dense, tender, and wonderfully moist.
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Making Einkorn Banana Bread
Einkorn is an ancient wheat variety, one that hasn't been hybridized or subject to chemical mutagenesis like some modern varieties. It also has relatively low gluten content and a fairly high level of micronutrients by comparison to modern varieties. For many people, heritage grains like einkorn are easier to digest.
Einkorn bakes a little differently from modern varieties of wheat, as it has less gluten which means a lower ability to hold its structure. It also tends to require less liquid than most other grains and flours and produces a sticky dough. While that can make most yeast-leavened bread made from einkorn a little tricky, einkorn produces excellent batter, quick breads, and muffins such as these einkorn blueberry muffins.
It's in batter bread, like this Einkorn Banana Bread, that einkorn really shines. Its rich flavor partners well with bananas, while dark chocolate offers the faintest hint of bitterness.
This recipe uses jaggery, an unrefined cane sugar traditionally used in Indian cookery. Because jaggery is unrefined, it retains its molasses content meaning that it not only brings moisture to the bread but minerals, too.
For this Einkorn Banana Bread recipe, I encourage you to use overripe bananas that have been frozen and then thawed. Freezing not only helps to bring out the sugars even more in ripe bananas, but it also breaks down the cellular structure, too. With this method, the bananas blend seamlessly into the einkorn batter, and the bread itself will have no chunks of banana - giving the bread a better flavor and more uniform consistency.
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5 from 4 votes
1 Loaf
Einkorn Banana Bread
Rich with banana and decadently moist, this einkorn banana bread is easy to make and impossibly delicious. Serve it with softened butter.
Prep Time10 minutes mins
Cook Time1 hour hr 10 minutes mins
Total Time1 hour hr 20 minutes mins
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Ingredients
- 4 frozen overripe bananas thawed overnight
- 2 cups all-purpose einkorn flour
- ½ teaspoon fine sea salt
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ½ cup salted butter
- 1 cup jaggery
- 2 eggs
- ⅓ cup milk kefir
- ½ cup chopped walnuts
- ½ cup dark chocolate chips
Instructions
Grease a 9-inch by 5-inch loaf pan or line it with parchment paper, and heat the oven to 350 F.
Remove the bananas from their peels, and return them to the colander. Set the colander in the sink or over a bowl to allow excess liquid to drain.
While the bananas drain, sift the einkorn flour with the baking soda and salt into a medium bowl, and set it aside.
Place the butter and jaggery into a stand mixer, and cream them together at medium speed until lightened and fluffy. Add the eggs and bananas, and beat them together until uniformly combined.
Beat one half of the flour into the liquid ingredients, and then pour in the kefir, and then beat in the remaining flour.
Fold the nuts and chocolate chips into the batter, and then pour the batter into your prepared loaf pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 70 minutes or until it springs back when lightly touched in the middle. Remove from pan and cool on a wire rack.
Notes
Substitutions. If you can't find jaggery, you can substitute organic dark brown sugar. If you don't have kefir, you can substitute ⅓ cup milk plus 1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar.
Rate this recipe!If you loved this recipe, give it a rating. Let us know what works, what didn't and whether you made any adjustments that can help other cooks.
Other Favorite Recipes Using Einkorn
Einkorn is an ancient variety of wheat, rich with flavor and micronutrients and easier to digest than modern varieties of wheat. Einkorn is a soft flour and particularly well-suited to pastries, cookies, and muffins. Here are some of our favorite ways to use it.
Einkorn Apple Muffins are rich with apples and pecans, cinnamon and nutmeg.
Sprouted Whole Grain Blueberry Muffins are spiked with lemon and dotted with juicy blueberries.
Apple Dutch Baby Pancake with Sprouted Einkorn Flour is an easy breakfast recipe to make, and nice to serve for brunch, too.
Love this? Try these next.
- Einkorn Gingerbread
- Einkorn Pancakes
- Plum Clafoutis
- Einkorn Apple Cake
Reader Interactions
Comments
Ani says
I love the content you publish each and every time. The recipes are precise and i tried a few recipes and they came out good. My whole family enjoyed it a lot.Reply
Rasha says
What does kefir do in this recipe? For more a sour taste?
Reply
Jillian says
We love this banana bread. I’ve not sourced jaggery yet and so always use coconut sugar. Turns out great, such an indulgent loaf. I’ve also subbed sprouted Einkorn flour for part or all and had it turn out great, but usually we use all purpose.I am curious, Jenny, do you recall how many slices did you base the nutritional data on. I see it says 1 slice for nutritional data and the recipe is 1 loaf but doesn’t specify number of servings.
Reply
Jenny says
I based it on 16 slices, I believe. Glad you like the recipe!
Melodie says
This is delicious - I used dark brown sugar and yogurt. Always happy to find good recipes using einkorn. Thanks!Reply
Miriam Kearney says
This recipe looks great but for me it has a couple of problems - I need my food (even my treats) to be pretty low carb. One of the products I'm interested in trying is Green Banana Flour which a friend told me tastes quite "banany" so I am thinking of making this subbing some of the Einkorn flour for Banana Flour. Doe you or anyone else have any thoughts on this ? Good idea ? Bad idea?
The other issues i the amount of Jaggery. I generally cook and even bake with very little sugar, using 25% of amount called for in recipe is typical. I am getting used to food not tasting so sweet rather than subbing in alternative sugars. Bananas are already quite sweet so I imagine I could do this easily in this recipe. Again, any ideas? Good? Bad?I'm asking these questions because I am a cook more than a baker and often don't know the effect of substitutions (except maybe sugar). I'd prefer not to have to do all the trial and error on my own. A quote I loved one time said something like this: "Learn from other people's mistakes, you'll never live long enough to make them all yourself".
Thanks.
Reply
Jenny says
Hi Miriam, you’re asking for several rather complicated substitutions. My recommendation would be for you to simply find a new recipe that meets you’re dietary requirements than attempt substations that may not work and may, instead, cause you to waste expensive ingredients.
Amy says
Loved the bread! Tried i with sprouted einkorn flour and it worked great.Reply
