Fat Pants Friday: Grandaisy Bakery's Banana Walnut Bread

Ice cream, cakes, and pies are lovely, but sometimes, the sweetest sustenance comes in more humble packages.

Such is the case with Grandaisy Bakery's banana walnut bread. Banana walnut bread typically invokes memories of school bake sales rather than visions of hedonism, but Grandaisy's version manages to fuse decadence with reassuring homeyness.

For $3, you get a serving of bread that's not so much a slice as a doorstop, a steroidal slab stuffed with fistfuls of walnuts and striated with the remnants of mashed fruit. It tastes almost solely of bananas, which is a good thing -- where most banana breads are crippled by too much sugar, the fruit here is left alone to work its dark magic.

The best part of banana walnut bread tends to be the crust, and while this crust is no exception -- it's less crust than a chorus of walnut halves, fused together in eternal song -- the rest of the bread more than holds its own. It's tender and so moist that even after two days in the fridge, its crumb showed no signs of dryness, and was as springy as the day it was purchased.

As its impressive size might indicate, Grandaisy's banana walnut bread earns a Sweatpants rating on the Fat Pants scale. While it makes an excellent breakfast, it's good at any time of the day, accompanied by a cup of tea or eaten by its sweet lonesome self.

Grandaisy Bakery
176 West 72nd Street
212-334-9435