Miso Banana Bread

Miso has so many applications. Since I started making it myself I’ve had to discover some of them, and I seem to have barely scratched the surface. This recipe essentially takes homemade miso, thins and smooths it with cream, and then uses it to replace some of the mashed banana in a typical banana bread recipe. So— go wild. Use this technique with your own quickbreads. The miso gives them a quality akin to poundcake—and some other indescribable goodness, too.

2 bananas, mashed
1/2 cup miso (I used field pea miso I made from Farm & Sparrow Filed Peas)
enough heavy cream to thin the miso to a creamy paste
2 eggs
1 C. raw sugar
1/2 t. baking soda
1/3 C. cultured buttermilk or yogurt
1/4 t. sea salt
1 t. pure vanilla extract
2 C. flour

Grease a loaf pan and set aside. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Use an immersion blender or small food processor to process the miso and cream. My miso was homemade, so it was more “cottage style” with some whole peas still in it. Chunky rather than smooth. If you are using a purchased miso, it may already be creamy enough for you, and you can skip this step, and the cream too.

Once you have your miso at the desired consistency, mash the bananas in with it. Add the remaining ingredients, stirring in the flour last. Put the batter into the greased loaf pan and bake, roughly 1 hour, or until a tester inserted in the center comes out clean.

Cool slightly before slicing, if you can manage to wait.