My husband has been a banana bread-making fool lately and the other day he did something so simple it took me aback. Secretly I was mad at myself for not thinking of it first, but when I saw him pull the bread pan out of the microwave, I knew I owed the man a high five.
Like many quick bread recipes, my husband's banana bread includes melted butter. His trick: instead of using a separate dish to melt the butter, he used the glass bread pan to melt it in the microwave. The bonus: Now the bread pan was greased and ready.
My husband adds an extra tablespoon of butter to the quantity called for in the recipe. One run through the microwave melted the butter for the recipe and prepped the pan for baking all at once. (If you use metal bread pans, you could easily melt your butter over a burner on your stove instead.) He swirls the butter around the pan before dumping it all out into the bowl with the other ingredients.
Forget butter wrappers or paper towels to grease your pan, just let the butter do its own dirty work!
Related: How To Make Basic Banana Bread
(Image: Sarah Rae Trover)
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Depending on the kind of container, wouldn't that heat up the pan to the point where it could conceivably cause the outer part of the bread to cook too quickly? I don't have a microwave, so I don't really know how much a glass pan heats up when melting butter, but I'd think it might retain a bit too much heat, no?
Usually the butter is added early in the recipe so I think the pan would cool down by the time the rest was mixed and ready to pour.
I can see people skimming this article and throwing their metal loaf tins in the microwave, haha
But, why wouldn't I put my tin in the microwa.... Bzzzpt!!!
I do this, but with a metal pan, and instead of using the microwave (I don't have one) I just put the pan and butter in the oven for a bit while the oven's pre-heating. seems to work well enough.
Alas, my quickbread recipes all call for creaming the butter with sugar. Nary a melted stick in sight.
Which is why I have about 6 butter wrappers in the freezer. Yep, I'm that person.
I was also going to suggest sticking the pan in the oven while it's pre-heating.
Genius
I'm going to try this.
Hm, if I was making a quick bread recipe that used melted butter, I would take the opportunity to add a little extra flavor by browning the butter instead--but this sounds like a nice way to have one less dirty pan!