Easy 5 Ingredient Banana Bread - Mind Over Munch (2024)

Healthy 5 Ingredient Banana Bread Recipe

How to Make an Easy Banana Bread with Minimal Ingredients

If you’ve got a few ripe bananas lying around, you can whip up this 5 ingredient banana bread in a jiffy! Deliciously soft and moist, perfectly sweet and flavorful, and oh-so-easy to throw together. All you’ll need are bananas, flour, eggs, maple syrup, and baking soda—just toss it all into a blender, pour it into a loaf pan, and bake! I’ll show you how to make an easy banana bread with minimal ingredients in under an hour.

Of course, you’re welcome to jazz up your loaf with any additional seasonings, flavorings, or mix-ins that you like. But the base batter for this 5 ingredient banana bread couldn’t be easier—or tastier. You don’t need tons of ingredients to get a delicious result! The perfect use-what-you-have kind of recipe, especially when you’ve got bananas browning on the counter and ripe for the baking. (See what I did there?)

And, with natural sweetness from the bananas and just ¼ cup of maple syrup in the entire recipe, it’s a deliciously sweet but still lower-sugar option—with only 10g of sugar per slice! It makes for a satisfying snack, or even a simple breakfast that feels like a treat. Or, heat it up in the toaster oven and enjoy it as a dessert with a scoop of ice cream!

Whether you’re stuck at home during quarantine or just wanting to bake a loaf on a whim, this is the perfect easy banana bread recipe to make with minimal ingredients. So, check your pantry and fridge, grab your blender, and let’s give this five ingredient banana bread a whirl.

5 Ingredient Banana Bread Recipe

• Ripe bananas (or 1½ cups mashed)
• All-purpose flour, or oat flour
• Eggs
• Maple syrup, or honey
• Baking soda

Substitution Notes

• Bananas: These are a must in this easy banana bread recipe! Of course, if you’re just looking for an easy loaf to make and don’t have bananas on hand, you could try swapping them out for 1½ cups of apple sauce.
• Flour: I made this recipe with all-purpose flour because it results in the texture that I like best, but this recipe will likely also work with oat flour as well.
• Eggs: These are necessary to give the loaf some of its rise and fluffiness, and I haven’t personally tried making this recipe with a substitute. If you’re looking for an alternative, you’re welcome to experiment with flax eggs, or even yogurt.
• Maple Syrup: This is my preferred sticky sweetener, but you can also use honey!
• Baking Soda: As the leavening agent in this recipe, it’s essential to get the loaf to rise in the oven. I haven’t personally tried making this 5 ingredient banana bread with baking powder instead, but you can try it. Generally, baking powder substitutes for baking soda at a 3:1 ratio, meaning you’d try replacing the 1 tsp of baking soda with 3 tsp of baking powder.

How to Make a Banana Bread Recipe with Minimal Ingredients

Again, the point of this five ingredient banana bread recipe is to make things easy! If you’ve got a blender, you don’t even need to mash up your bananas. Just break them into pieces, toss everything into the blender, and blend until smooth! Then, simply pour your batter into a prepared loaf pan and let it bake in a 350°F (180°C) oven for 45-50 minutes.

Before you get started, there are just a few questions to consider as you choose your ingredients for this recipe.

Can I Use Regular Bananas for Banana Bread?

By “regular” bananas here, I’m talking about under-ripe or just all-yellow bananas. And the answer is no—do NOT use underripe bananas in this 5 ingredient banana bread recipe or any banana bread recipe! As bananas ripen, their starches convert into sugars and they become sweeter. Riper bananas will always be the sweetest and add the best flavor to your baked goods, so you must use ripe bananas.

If you struggle to remember to buy bananas ahead of time so they’re ripe when you’re ready to bake, consider making a practice of freezing ripe bananas! Let your bananas ripen, peel and slice them once they’re really ripe, and freeze them in a freezer-safe bag to use later. Personally, I haven’t tried this hack myself—I’ve only read about it—so I can’t speak to how well it will work out. But, my recommendation would be to thaw frozen bananas overnight in the fridge before using them.

How Ripe Should Bananas Be for Banana Bread?

So, how ripe is ripe enough for banana bread? Honestly, you want your bananas to be very ripe, so the peels are spotted or streaked or even fully brown/black in color. You want there to be NO green visible, or just barely a hint of green at the stem. The darker your banana looks, the sweeter it’ll be—so there’s really no such thing as too ripe!

Can I Make a 5 Ingredient Gluten Free Banana Bread?

For those who want a gluten free banana bread option, oat flour should work just fine in this recipe. As of writing this, I haven’t yet tested the recipe using oat flour—only all-purpose flour—but oat flour generally works well as a substitute in loaf recipes like this. If you’re making homemade oat flour from oats, I recommend sifting it first (with a flour sifter or fine mesh strainer) for the fluffiest texture.

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