We are nearing the one year mark for when things began to shut down because of COVID and I got to thinking, if you launch a blog in 2020 and don’t even have a banana bread recipe posted, did it even happen?

Last year, banana bread was one of the most popular things to bake. I suppose panic and limited trips to the store leads to overbuying which leads to uneaten produce which leads to banana bread again and again and again. I get it. For me though, banana bread has never been something I went out of my way to make. When buying bananas I never grab a few extra so that I can turn them into bread later. I do that with zucchini. Because hands down, no discussion, zucchini bread beats banana bread in a fight any day. The flavor and texture is so much more interesting. I do like banana bread though, it’s just never a high priority bake for me. That is until I started making this whole-wheat poppyseed version.

My obsession with poppyseeds goes back to my formative years. As a kid, whenever we would go on long road trips my mom would bring along a large box of Costco muffins which contained an assortment of double chocolate, some sort of muffin with streusel, and poppyseed. Every single morning, without fail, I would reach past the chocolate and grab that giant poppyseed muffin. I was obsessed. When I close my eyes I can still taste that muffin.

This nostalgia has prompted a lot of poppyseed experimentation lately. I’ve been putting them in cakes, pancakes, on peanut butter banana toast, etc., but my favorite thing so far has been adding them to my banana bread.

With the addition of poppyseeds and chia seeds you end up with a surprisingly delightful snack bread. Banana bread is already quite moist but it can often be dense and with a crumb that is slightly more chewy than you want it to be. The poppyseeds add a nice crunch and a very subtle bitterness while keeping the whole-wheat batter light and fluffy. And the streusel is just there to make me happy. When in doubt add streusel.

Note: I’ve found that streusel loses its crispy delightfulness after three days and doesn’t keep well in the freezer so if you are not going to eat the bread within that timeframe you can instead just top the bread with a tablespoon of poppyseeds and a tablespoon of sugar.