How to Ripen Bananas Fast for Banana Bread

You've mastered the right way to freeze bananas and are a certified Banna Pudding Master, but what are cooks to do when they need their bananas to ripen fast for banana bread? The oven method to the rescue.

As Food 52, recently explained, putting your bananas in the oven is an easy way to ripen your bananas on the fly. As writer Ella Quittner shares, you'll want to put your bananas on a lined, rimming baking sheet and set your oven to 300°F. "In all of my tinkering with this method, I've found the sweet spot—no pun intended—in terms of baking time and resulting banana flavor/texture to be a 15 to 20 minute bake at 300°F," says Quittner. "[U]ntil the peels are almost black all over, with just a very thin stripe of yellow remaining in the middle." Of course, your oven's heat distribution and bananas' initial ripeness may vary, so you may want to experiment a few times to see what works best for you.

WATCH: Amy Grant's Banana Nut Bread Recipe

It's not a perfect textural and flavor replica of a naturally ripened banana, but when you need banana bread, you need banana bread.