Crockpot Banana Bread Recipe- Easy! (2024)

FAQs

How do you proof bread in a slow cooker? ›

3) Proof Bread with a Slow Cooker

Fill your slow cooker halfway with water and set to the low setting (which will heat the water to about 200ºF). Put the lid on upside down, lay a dishtowel on top, then set your bowl of dough on top. The radiant heat from the hot water will help the bread rise.

Using too much banana could make your bread heavy and damp in the center, causing it to appear undercooked and unappealing. If you have bananas leftover, you can always freeze them for later use.

Over mixing the batter

Some gluten is essential but, the more you mix, the longer those gluten strands become. Mix even slightly too much and you wind up with a banana bread that's tough and gummy rather than soft and tender.

But you can also use your slow cooker like an auxiliary oven and stick your baking dish, cake pan or pie plate into the standard insert that came with it. It helps to use a short wire rack to raise your pan off the bottom so the heat can circulate all around it as it does in a conventional oven.

“If the dough has risen too long, it's going to feel fragile and might even collapse as you poke it,” says Maggie. If this is the case, there's a chance you can save your dough by giving it a quick re-shape. Learn more about this fix in our blog on saving overproofed dough.

If they smell off, that's another good indicator that they are no longer okay to use. Rotten bananas will often have a fermented or alcohol-like smell. While it's okay if the banana peel is dark brown or even black, if the inside is too, then the fruit is beyond ripe and now on its way to rotten.

Bake for longer: If the center of your banana bread is still gooey, you may need to bake it for a longer time. Check the bread every 5-10 minutes by inserting a toothpick into the center. If it comes out with moist crumbs, continue baking until the toothpick comes out clean or with a few dry crumbs.

You may find banana bread delicious, but conventional banana breads tend to be high in added sugar, refined carbs, and calories. Thus, it's best to enjoy banana bread occasionally as part of a balanced, nutrient-dense diet.

Using too much flour makes for an extra crumbly bread.

If you're tapping your measuring cup to level out flour as you measure, or you're pushing down the piled-up powder, you'll end up using too much of it. I packed my flour for this loaf, and what I got was a crumbly cake with a dry crust all around.

Try lowering the temperature by 25°F, and bake for a slightly longer time. If you are using a dark colored pan like many non-stick pans it will cause the outside to brown more quickly while the inside stays raw. The same fix will work, just lower the temperature.

Why does my banana bread taste off? ›

Skimping on the sugar can dry out a loaf of banana bread and leave it flavorless. It turns out, sugar does more than just make things sweeter. When it comes to banana bread, cutting back on sugar will leave you with a dry loaf totally devoid of any distinguishable flavor.

If your oven has not reached the correct baking temperature before the banana bread is placed in the oven, the banana bread will be undercooked and more likely to sink. I like to use a hanging oven thermometer placed inside my oven to see if the oven has reached the correct temperature.

Our Favorite Alternative to Toothpicks

Look at your knife set and find the one with the thinnest blade. Then insert the blade into the center of the cake. If the knife comes out clean, the cake is done. If batter or crumbs stick to the blade, let your cake bake a few minutes more and retest with a clean knife.

When the center of your bread is baked through a thermometer will register between 200°F and 205°F. No part of your loaf should be below 200°F — except perhaps the very top, which may produce an unreliable reading due to the thermometer's tip being partially exposed to room-temperature air.

Retarding bread dough (proofing at cold temperature)

Cold proofing, or retarding, is where the shaped dough is placed into the refrigerator (or a dough retarder) to let proof for many hours at a cold temperature (usually overnight).

A Bowl of Steaming Water is the Key to Quickly Proofing Bread. In the winter, when your house and kitchen are at a crisp temperature and you need a warm spot for your dough to rise, create a makeshift “proof box” by placing a bowl of steaming water inside your oven alongside your bowl of dough.

The crumb structure of an under proofed loaf will be tight and gummy. Because it was not given enough time to develop and trap CO2 gasses, the crumb structure will be very dense, with uneven air bubbles.

Carefully fill an oven-safe dish with several cups of boiling water, then place the water-filled dish on the bottom rack of your oven. Bread dough rises well in a moist and warm environment, between 70–80°F, so be sure to keep the oven off unless you plan to use a specialized proofing setting.