1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking SODA

1/2 teaspoon table salt

5 larger bananas (Over-ripe, almost black is good!)

8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted/softened and returned to room temp

3/4 cup light brown sugar (packed)

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 large eggs

2 teaspoons granulated sugar (optional, provides harder top-crust when sprinkled on top)

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 F. I prefer convection to help even bake, but either is OK. Middle rack.

Prepare loaf pan (glass preferred, 9x4x4) with non-stick spray with flour, or butter with flour, or line it on the long side with parchment paper with extra to grab onto to pull the bread out of the pan. Butter ends if using parchment.

Whisk flour, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl, set-aside.

Peel and slice the 5 bananas into a large glass bowl, and cover with Saran Wrap, and puncture wrap. Microwave on high for 5 minutes to release (hopefully) a lot of juice.

Place fine-mesh strainer over medium-size bowl, and pour out banana/juice mixture through strainer into bowl. Let stand 15 minutes, occasionally stirring to get juice to fall through. You should end up with 1/4 to 1/2 cup juice.

Pour juice-only into a smaller fry pan on medium-high heat, pour remaining bananas into the medium bowl you just emptied.

Occasionally stir the juice in the fry pan for 5 minutes. This should reduce into a potent banana juice about 1/4 cup!

Pour juice back into bananas in the medium bowl, and mash up the bananas using potato masher until smooth. Whisk in the melted butter, brown sugar, vanilla, and the two eggs. Mix this up into nice even mash.

Pour mash mixture into the large bowl with the flour mixture in it. Stir the mix up until you just see slight flour streaks remaining. Gently fold in the chopped walnuts. Gently fold in chocolate chips (ensure mixture is cool enough to avoid melting chips!)

Scrape batter mix into the loaf pan, and even it out by tapping. For slight crispy top, sprinkle sugar over top.

Place in oven centered. Bake minimum of 65 minutes, some ovens may require up to 75 minutes. Place toothpick as deep as you can in a few spots. Nothing should stick. I’ve baked a couple loafs where the toothpick showed no sticking, but I didn’t get deep enough. This is a really moist mixture, so bake it well, it’s very hard to burn, and even if the top is dark, trust me, the inside is moist.

Remove pan and place on wire rack to cool, with the bread in the pan.