Zoe Hollowell

The Science of Banana Bread

Proposed Question​: How does the ripeness of the banana used in the bread affect the
sweetness, moisture, and possibly the texture.
Proposed Hypothesis​: The riper the banana the sweeter and moister the bread will be.

How I’m Testing This: ​In this experiment, I am making three different types of banana bread
and in each I will have a banana that is at a different stage of ripeness. In bread A I used one
non-ripe banana, in bread B I used a perfectly ripe banana, and in bread C I used an over ripe
banana. Then I tested the amount of moisture in the breads quantitatively and then people took
a survey to tell me what they thought about the moisture and sweetness. This was an open
taste test. I did this because I wanted everyone to know what they were tasting and how they
were different.

Recipe:
Ingredients:
● ½ cup of sugar
● ¼ cup butter
● 1 egg
● ¼ tsp. salt
● 1 banana
● 1 cup flour
● ½ tsp. baking soda
Directions:
1. Cream butter and sugar
I had a separate bowl where I put my melted butter in and then added the sugar and then I
mixed them together.
2. Beat in egg and mashed banana
If you want a perfect mixture, beat the egg beforehand and add it to the butter and sugar
mixture. You could also mash the banana and then add it into the mix.
3. Add sifted flour, salt, and baking soda
Again, if you want a perfect mixture mix your sifted, dry ingredients in a separate bowl and then
add the wet ingredient mixture.
4. Put into greased pan
Use butter or oil and spread it around the pan covering both the bottom of the pan and the
sides.
5. Bake for one hour or until done at 350℉
A trick you can use to see if your bread is cooked all the way through is to stick a toothpick in
the middle of the bread and if there is anything on it when you pull it out, let it bake for a few
more minutes. I could tell when mine was done because it started to brown on top.

Bread:
“Green bananas receive a ripening signal, such as picking from the tree, bruising or insect
damage. When this signal occurs, small amounts of the chemical ethylene is naturally
produced. Ethylene triggers a series of reactions that are involved in the ripening of the
bananas. It activates enzymes like hydrolases, amylases, and pectinases that are responsible
for breaking down the starches into sugars and break down of pectin in the fruit, essentially
making the cells less glued to each other and softening the banana, importantly stopping it from
feeling starchy when eating.
Other activated enzymes start to change the color from green to yellow, produce that
characteristic banana smell and others again neutralize natural acids to remove those sour
unripe flavors. As this ripening progresses, more ethylene gas is produced, which further
enhances this ripening process, especially in warm weather as the gas can move in and out of
the fruit quickly. The pores in the banana skin open up to transfer more of the ethylene out-this
is why if you put a ripe banana next to a green one, the green one will ripen quicker. Once all of
the starches have been converted to sugars, and the skin has become very thin (starches in the
skin get broken down to sugars too), the sugars will start to break down and form alcohol. This
will produce that distinct smell you associate with putrefying fruit.”

So when the riper bananas are used they’re sweeter making the bread sweeter.

“Plants send signals using hormones, but most hormones travel through the plant. The hormone
that signals ripening, ethylene, can travel through the air. Ethylene is a hydrocarbon gas with
the chemical formula C₂H₄. Oxygen gas is needed to produce ethylene gas. The gaseous form
of oxygen has the chemical formula O₂. Glucose is a simple sugar produced by plants. Its
chemical formula is C₆H₁₂O₆.”

Results:
To test the moisture and the sweetness I made a survey that everyone took that taste tested my
banana bread and the results were very different from each other. I also did two quantitative
tests for the amount of moisture in the three different banana breads. The first test I did to test
the amount of moisture in the different breads was used a machine that tells you the percentage
of moisture that's in something. I used this machine on all three different types of my banana
bread and it showed that bread B (which had the perfectly ripe bananas) had the highest
percentage of moisture, bread A (with under-ripe bananas) had the second-most and bread C
(with the overripe bananas) had the least amount of moisture. The second quantitative test that I
did was I took a piece of each bread, weighed them all and then left them out to dry for two
days. Then I weighed them after so that I could see how much water had evaporated from the
pieces of bread. Bread C (with the overripe bananas) had the biggest difference from before
weight and after weight which means it lost the most amount of water. It also means that it was
the moistest. The people that ate my bread also took a survey that showed that people thought
that Bread A (under-ripe bananas) was the perfect amount of sweetness. The survey also
showed that ​Bread B (ripe bananas) had the perfect amount of moisture. When asked what
bread was their favorite, there was a tie between bread A and bread B. I also asked if the
texture of the bread affected how much you like it and everyone (16 people) except one person
said that it did. I concluded that my hypothesis was both right and wrong because I thought that
the over-ripe banana bread would be the sweetest and moistest but it wasn’t.

Bibliography:
http://thepantryreview.blogspot.com/2010/12/little-food-chemistry-bananas-and.html
file:///home/chronos/u-ffdc66af12af2835a75d17b25c415368b805157e/Downloads/Brown%20Ba
nanas.pdf