The bananas are the trick.

Our classic banana bread is baked with real butter, fresh eggs, cane sugar, a touch of Madagascar vanilla and nearly two perfectly ripe bananas. You can’t just buy freshly frozen peeled bananas from a distributor because they don’t taste right. Everyone knows what the perfect banana for making banana bread looks like: its deep yellow, some brown spots are starting to form on the peel and you can smell the banana all over the house. But no one sells bananas like that to bakeries like ours.

The folks at Zingerman’s Bakehouse had to think outside the box.

Since they sell fresh bread to markets and stores that also sell bananas, they struck a deal. When those vendors have ripe bananas they can’t sell to their customers, they send them to the bakehouse. They might send a case, they might send twenty. You just don’t know, so when they arrive at the Bakehouse it’s all hands on deck. They peel the ripe bananas and freeze them for later. That’s how they’ve solved the trick of using ripe bananas! This isn’t what your sister made after school, it’s something to crave and covet. Sharing is up to you.