Vegan Banana Bread Recipe: 6 Tips for Making Vegan Bread

Vegan banana bread is a type of banana quick bread made without animal products like eggs or dairy. Instead, this sweet treat achieves a rich, moist crumb from ingredients like vegetable and coconut oil, vegan butter, and non-dairy milk, like almond, soy, or coconut. Incorporating maple syrup into the batter can impart a new dimension of flavor and add moisture to the quick bread.

Standard toppings for vegan banana bread include peanut butter, a drizzle of vegan dark chocolate, and sliced almonds.

The best vegan banana bread is soft and full of flavor, and the right substitutions will make it nearly indistinguishable from non-vegan banana bread. If it’s your first time making vegan banana bread, consider these tips:

1. 1. Enhance the flavor with whole-grain flours. Alternatives to all-purpose white flour, like spelt flour, whole-wheat flour, and whole-wheat pastry flour, introduce new depths of flavor to vegan banana bread, but you’ll need to adjust your liquid content to account for their density.
2. 2. Experient to achieve the right texture. Banana bread achieves most of its richness from the bananas, so experiment with add-ins to see which results in your preferred texture. There are many egg and dairy-free solutions to help bakers achieve a classic banana bread texture. Use natural binding agents like flax eggs or chia eggs (1 tablespoon of flaxseed meal or chia meal rehydrated with 3 tablespoons of water) or plant milk cut with a splash of vinegar to stand in for traditional dairy.
3. 3. Incorporate mix-ins. Like its traditional counterpart, vegan banana bread is an excellent base for different additions, from vegan chocolate chips to chopped nuts.
4. 4. Make it gluten-free. To make vegan banana bread sans gluten, swap the AP flour with a gluten-free flour blend, like almond flour or chickpea flour. Chickpeas lend a nutty undertone to the bread that pairs especially well with banana.
5. 5. Swap the oil for applesauce. You can make a low-fat vegan quick bread by subbing the coconut oil for unsweetened applesauce.
6. 6. Use overripe bananas. The ideal bananas for any kind of banana loaf are covered in brown spots and soft to the touch. If you’re using frozen bananas, let them thaw completely before mashing.