How to Freeze Dry Bananas for Banana Bread + A Delicious Recipe

Everyone has experienced the frustration of having an entire bunch of bananas go bad at once. It’s a good thing that banana bread exists, but who wants to make five loaves of bread to avoid wasting all those bananas? If you’ve got a home freeze dryer, preserve those almost-gone bananas so you can make banana bread at your own pace.

Note: Even though this post is about using a home freeze dryer to preserve bananas as an ingredient, you can still make the recipe with regular bananas! Instructions are provided for both methods. If you don’t have a freeze dryer, jump to the recipe.

Can You Freeze Dry Bananas at Home?

Buying a home freeze dryer was one of our best decisions because the possibilities are pretty limitless. Bananas are hands-down one of the easiest things to throw in your freeze dryer.

The process of freeze drying perfectly-ripe bananas for snacking isn’t that different than preserving ones that are almost too bad to save. You just have to be a bit more careful with peeling and slicing if they’re mushy.

Keep in mind that banana bread uses overripe bananas in order to have the best flavor. If you’re preserving bananas for making bread, they should be turning brown or have brown spots like the ones pictured above.

How to Prep Bananas for Freeze Drying

For snacking purposes, we prep our bananas by cutting them into slices. This makes them easier to just pop in your mouth. For banana bread purposes, I wanted to have a more accurate idea of how much banana I would need to rehydrate for each batch of bread.

With that in mind, I just sliced them down the middle lengthwise and laid them out on the sheets. This bunch of 8-9 bananas filled up two trays with room to spare.

Bananas can be freeze dried in the same batch as other fruits without it affecting the flavor. If you have room left over, make the most of it by throwing in some other fruit on the remaining tray(s).

What Setting Should I Use for Making Freeze Dried Bananas?

As with everything we’ve put through the freeze dryer so far, we’ve stuck with the default setting. Because we only had two trays of food with this batch, and the bananas were pretty spread out, they finished in less than a day.

Storing Freeze Dried Bananas

We use different storage solutions for our freeze dried food, depending on the intended use. For snacking purposes, we throw our bananas into a big jar along with any other fruits we recently made.

For specific purpose of making banana bread, you can store the pieces in a mylar bag exactly as they come out of the freeze dryer. But I don’t recommend this because it’s unlikely that you’ll want to use all of your bananas at once, and you’d have to reseal the bag each time after opening it.

I found that throwing them in a jar is the best storage solution. Crushing them rather than putting them in whole will save a huge amount of space.

Because freeze dried bananas are hard and dense, it’s difficult to crush them by hand. So I threw them into a food processor to make a powder. This method just makes it easier to store the fruit in a more compact container, if you so choose.

These jars are my favorite for storing powdered freeze dried ingredients.

Whether you use a bag or a jar, be sure to put an oxygen absorber in the container. You can sometimes get away with skipping the oxygen absorber for short-term storage, especially with fruit. But it’s better to use one anyway to avoid ruining your product.

Tip: Freeze dried powders absorb moisture much more quickly than large pieces of freeze dried food. So it helps to be quick when you’re opening any containers of freeze dried powder.

Measuring Freeze Dried Bananas for Banana Bread

My banana bread recipe (below) calls for 2 full bananas. If you left your bananas intact, just grab the right number of pieces to equal two full bananas.

If you crushed/powdered your freeze dried bananas like mine, you’ll need to use a measuring cup or kitchen scale to get the right amount:

• 2 bananas = 1/2 cup of powdered banana. If there are large chunks in your crushed powder, it may affect your measurement.
• 2 bananas = about 45 grams of banana powder. Because freeze dried ingredients are practically as light as air, it’s necessary to have a sensitive kitchen scale that can give you an accurate reading.

Rehydrating Your Banana Pulp

I never rehydrate snacking bananas because they’re so good just the way they are. But to get the correct liquid ratios for bread, you’ll want to make a banana pulp by adding water. Putting dry banana powder in your bread mixture will just soak up the other liquid, drying out the loaf.

To start the hydration process, put your freeze dried bananas into a bowl or measuring cup. If they weren’t crushed before, you may want to do so now to help with rehydrating.

Here, I’ve measured out 1/2 cup of powder. I used a regular measuring cup and dumped the powder into this liquid measuring cup.

It doesn’t take a lot of water to rehydrate the powder. It’s easiest to just run a trickle of water from the faucet while stirring until you get a gelatin-like consistency.

I only added 1-2 tablespoons of water. As you can see, the measurement barely goes above the 1/2 cup line. The consistency should be something like this. It looks kind of gross, but tastes delicious!

Banana Bread Recipe

This is a relatively low-sugar banana bread recipe. It won’t taste super sweet, but it’s still moist and delicious. You can always add 1/4 to 1/2 cup more sugar if you want something a little more dessert-y.

This recipe is for one loaf of bread. It can easily be doubled.

Equipment you need:

• A large bowl or standing mixer, such as a KitchenAid
• Rubber or silicone spatula
• One 4 x 8″ loaf pan
• Toothpick
• Parchment paper or butter/oil to grease your loaf pan (optional)
• Cooling rack (optional)

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup (one stick) butter
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1/4 cup light brown sugar
• 2 mashed, overripe bananas or 1/2 cup rehydrated banana pulp (see instructions above)
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup sour cream or plain yogurt
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 1/2 cup all purpose flour

Steps

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.

2. Melt butter.

3. Combine melted butter and mashed bananas in mixing bowl.

4. Add baking soda, salt, sugar, eggs, sour cream/yogurt and vanilla. Mix.

5. Finally, add flour and mix. Scrape edges off to ensure even mixing.

6. Prepare loaf pan by lining it with parchment paper or buttering/oiling the sides to make it non-stick (optional).

7. Bake for 50 minutes at 350°F. Check bread by sticking a toothpick in the middle. If it comes out clean (goop free), the bread is done.

Additional baking time may be necessary. If so, check bread every few minutes until the toothpick comes out clean.

8. Remove from oven and flip onto a cooling rack. Let cool for at least 10 minutes before slicing. Enjoy it plain or with butter. It’s delicious either way!

I found that this version of the recipe (using freeze dried banana powder) turned out a bit lighter in color than traditional banana bread. I don’t know for sure, but I’m assuming freeze dried bananas don’t oxidize at the same rate as fresh bananas.

Did you try this recipe? Tell us how it went! If you used freeze dried banana, I’d love to know how you think it compares to regular banana bread. I think it tastes the same!