Flour For Banana Bread

Our answer

Nigella's Banana Bread (from HOW TO BE A DOMESTIC GODDESS) is a good way to use up over-ripe bananas. The bread is studded with plump raisins and chopped walnuts, giving bursts of sweetness and contrasting texture.

The recipe uses a combination of plain (all-purpose) flour plus baking powder and bicarbonate of soda (baking soda). Nigella prefers to use plain flour and baking powder as it gives much better control over the recipe. Self-rising flour in the US is primarily formulated for biscuits and pancakes and in the UK self-raising flour is primarily formulated for Victoria sponge cakes. However, the recipe uses 2 teaspoons of baking powder to 175g flour and this is fairly close to the amount we would use to replicate self-rising flour (2 teaspoons of baking powder to 150g flour). So overall we suspect that you could use self-rising flour instead, and omit the baking powder but continue to add the 1/2 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda. Also if you are using US self-rising flour please note that this usually contains added salt (check the packaging of your flour to be sure), so you will need to reduce the amount of salt added in the recipe or omit it completely. We would also mention that as we have not tried the recipe with self-raising or self-rising flour, we are unable to guarantee the results.