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Chapter Two: Going Bananas


Everyone has this moment where they buy beautiful bananas with every intention of consuming. Then those good intentions get away from you, and those once beautiful slowly turn into a sad memory of what they once were. Unfortunately, that’s when you notice them again, after a moment of “well crap”, you scoop yourself up and decide you better not let them go to complete waste.

As I embarked on this journey to right a wrong, I noticed very little difference in the batter. They were both pale and mixed the same. Again though, the gluten free batter was a bit gritty like cookie dough, due to the rice flour. With no distinct differences in the batter's like my last experiment, I had to resort to using sprinkles to tell the difference. Now in the oven, playing the waiting game like always, it did look like the gluten free one was a lighter color and was spreading more evenly. Both taking about the same time to bake and cool, it was time for the real test.

(Gluten free above and regular below)

As you can see, there was no real difference between the structure. You don’t really notice a difference at all until you eat the bread. Both have the same color once out of the oven, and they both rose nicely. My first guinea pig agreed that the bread was a light texture, moist, but noticed that it was sweeter than expected for banana bread. That seemed to be the general consensus, that the gluten free one was a little sweeter than the regular. As the bread cooled and people tried it, I started to get some interesting comments. A popular statement was that it was gummy, took longer to chew, but was more moist than the regular one. Other than that, it was a general agreement that it was hard to tell the difference until chewing.

Something that I have come to realize is that gluten free doesn’t have to taste bad anymore. We have come to a point in food science where we don’t have to compromise taste anymore to meet dietary needs. And so far, texture and the structure have been affected very little. It’s nice to know that those few that have gluten problems aren’t missing out.

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