For 17 years, Aina Harold and younger sister Kahala have started their morning side by side in the kitchen. By 07:00, they’re measuring and mixing ingredients like flour, sugar, eggs, and most importantly, pounds of bananas harvested from their backyard.
It’s the universal ultimate comfort food
“We have it down to a science after all these years,” Harold said. “Sometimes I’ll do the baking, sometimes she will. It’s really easy with the two of us.”
A little more than an hour later, they’re pulling 60 fresh loaves of banana bread from the oven and taking them straight to the family’s farmstand on Hawaii’s island of Maui.
The Twin Falls stand, marked by a brightly painted sign shaped like a surfboard, is the first major pull-over on the Road to Hana, a popular 64-mile route famed for twisting roads, secluded black-sand beaches and banana bread stands.
The bread made by the Harold sisters is consistently named one of the best.
The loaves, which sell for $6, are moist and sweet, with sizeable chunks of banana. “We bring it to the stand hot at 09:00, and by 12:00 they’re all gone.” Harold says some customers bring a stick of butter with them to spread on the bread, and loaves are often consumed in the car park straight from the bag. “They will open it up and start taking big chunks and passing it around.”
But since 18 March, Harold, 43, and her sister, 34, have halted their baking routine because they don’t have customers. Travel to Hawaii is almost impossible due to the coronavirus. The state’s governor has asked tourists to stay away for now, and all arriving visitors and residents are subject to a mandatory 14-day quarantine at their own expense. In addition, the Road to Hana is closed to all but residents.
Meanwhile, though, interest in banana bread has never been higher.
Home baking has seen a huge spike in popularity during the coronavirus pandemic. Google reports that searches for banana bread have reached an all-time high, making it the globe’s most-searched recipe. (Other top searches include pizza dough, French toast and chocolate cake.)
Banana bread searches have been particularly strong in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, the United States, South Africa, the United Kingdom, Turkey, the Netherlands and Costa Rica.
Food experts aren’t surprised.
“People are baking now because they’re home and they’re scared and they need some comfort,” said PJ Hammel, a cookbook writer and blogger for the US-based King Arthur Flour Company.
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She says banana bread is a great place to start since it’s so easy to make, requiring no more than bananas, sugar, fat, flour and a chemical leavener. “It’s what they call a one-bowl recipe. You don’t have to melt anything. Once you squish those bananas up, you just mix it together and pour it into a pan and bake it. It couldn’t be any simpler.”
Banana bread falls into the category of quick breads, which can be made without yeast. They became popular in the 1900s with the growing popularity of baking soda and baking powder, which are added to recipes as a leavening agent.
“The baking powder revolution was huge,” said cookbook writer Nancie McDermott, who specialises in home baking. “It makes all these baked goods easy.”
Bananas developed in South-East Asia and have been used as a food source for thousands of years. But the website Foodtimeline.org traces the earliest modern banana breads to the United States. Recipes first surfaced in the 1930s, notes the site, which was created by a reference librarian using vintage and antique cookbooks and other sources. “Some food historians theorise this recipe was ‘invented’ by thrifty housewives who didn’t want to throw out over-ripe bananas. Our evidence suggests the recipe was probably invented in corporate kitchens to promote the star ingredient.”
Whatever the origin, the recipe took off, and by the 1950s was becoming a staple of home baking. Popularity soared with the interest in natural and health food in the 1970s, and it shows no sign of letting up. Bananas, after all, are the world’s second-most-popular fruit after the tomato, and are widely available.
Maui has put its own spin on the creation, producing a spongy loaf, rich in banana flavour. It’s extra moist, more resembling dense cake then bread. Some bakers on the island add chocolate chips, macadamia nuts, strawberries, coconut or pineapple. Harold, though, keeps her bread simple. She follows a recipe from her mother, who probably got it from her mother, she said.
The uglier they are, the sweeter they taste
The baker’s not quite sure what makes Maui’s version so special but says it could be the locally grown bananas. She uses both the familiar Williams banana, a cultivar of the Cavendish, the world’s most common variety; and the apple banana, a smaller variety found across Hawaii that has a tangy taste and a creamy texture. Both grow in her backyard and are best when they begin to brown.
“The uglier they are, the sweeter they taste,” she said.
But there’s something more at play too, she suspects.
“People will take a bite and they say: ‘Remember when Grandma used to make banana bread?’ I don’t know if a lot of people do that now, but food tastes better if you’re making it as family together, really making it together from scratch.”
That’s what lead Darlene Fiske to bake a loaf with her 17-year-old son last week. The small business owner in Austin, Texas, said her family still remembers banana bread from their Hawaiian holiday seven years ago.
She had always heard about the Maui treat, and then she spotted a stand while her family was travelling along the Hana Highway. “I said ‘Oh my gosh, we’ve got to stop.’ We pulled over and had the best banana bread we had ever had. We ate it all by the time we got back to our hotel.”
That experience was in the back of her mind when she went shopping last week. “We had bought too many bananas, of course. Maybe, subconsciously, I wanted a few to spoil so I could have this bonding experience with my son during this pandemic.”
She served as sous chef while her son led the baking effort, using a treasured children’s cookbook given to him by his grandmother. The page with the banana bread recipe was stained from use. And when the loaf emerged from the oven, the family all thought of Hawaii. “Maui was totally on our mind,” Fiske said.
She snapped a photo for Facebook before the family dug in. “When I posted that picture, so many people reached out to me and said: ‘I just baked a loaf at home too.’ It’s the universal ultimate comfort food.”
Still, it didn’t quite taste like the bread they had in Hawaii.
While local bakers are reluctant to share recipes, Harold lets on that one of her secrets is not blending the bananas with a machine.
“I don’t condone electric mixers. We either put gloves on and do it with our hands, or we’ll use a masher and take 20 minutes. That’s how you get that chunkiness in there.”
Arnold Magbual, 51, who runs the Four Sisters Bakery in the west Maui town of Wailuku, says it’s hard to pinpoint the appeal of his bread. “What’s the difference? I have no idea.”
We give aloha to it – a lot of love
Before the virus, the family-run shop was making 1,000 loaves a week, but he had resisted opportunities to expand. “We don’t take shortcuts. We are a mom-and-pop bakery and as small as we are, it’s like making it at home.”
Magbual, a Filipino-American, got his banana bread recipe from his father when he took over the bakery about 20 years ago. But he immediately began to tweak it, adding vanilla custard (pudding to North Americans), which makes for an especially moist loaf. “If you don’t have pudding, you can put in sour cream. It will make it nice and light and adds a creamy flavour.”
And, he says, there might be something else that makes his bread special.
“We give aloha to it – a lot of love.”
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Eileen’s Banana Nut Bread
1½ c sugar
¾ c vegetable oil
4 eggs
1 package (3.4 ounces) vanilla instant custard (pudding)
2½ c flour
1 teaspoon salt
½ tsp baking powder
2 tsp baking soda
3 c mashed bananas
1½ c chopped nuts
Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C). Spray 3 small loaf pans with cooking spray. Combine sugar, oil and eggs; mix well. Add remaining ingredients. Pour mixture into loaf pans. Bake for 55 minutes. Makes 12 servings.
(Credit: Hawaiian Electric utility company)
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