A Passion for Baking

The Banta Baker is a home bakery located in the Banta neighborhood of Valparaiso, Indiana started by Alexander Steciuch to give him an outlet to fulfill his unstoppable urge to bake. When you are baking too much to give away to friends and family and you need to support your baking obsession, that’s when you start selling!

We specialize in sourdough soft pretzels, sourdough bagels, and scones with an ever-changing menu of Bundt cakes, cookies, and savory items.

We currently do not have a storefront (though that would be the dream). We are a home bakery; that means everything is baked out of our home. Every order is made to order, fresh, and picked up at a time that works for both the baker and the customer. We do not keep extra items on hand (but it might not hurt to ask).

We are closed on Sundays.

Earliest pickup is 8 AM, latest pick up is 6 PM. If you need additional time, or need to pick up earlier, just ask. We are very accommodating.

FAQs

  • No, not currently. We currently bake out of our home kitchen on a home based vendor license.

  • Our address is given out after an order is placed. We are based in the Banta neighborhood of Valparaiso, IN on Beech Street, close to the Banta Activity Center. In order to prevent confusion about a storefront, we only give out the address after ordering.

  • Yes, absolutely! Unless requested otherwise (such as for frozen bagels/pretzels) all of our orders are made fresh to order. This means in most cases you are getting baked goods baked same day, as close to the pick up time as possible. We pride ourselves on getting everything to you as fresh as possible, as fresh out of the oven as we can.

  • Yes we do! In fact there are quite a few items that have been on the menu or we are capable of making that are not listed on there. But we do have an off menu that contains many items we have made in the past. We also can do large orders for people looking to have desserts for their events, including cakes, pies, cookie trays, or large orders of other items.

  • Yes you may. Beyond just adjusting recipes to account for allergies, if there is something you’d like included in your order (such as adding nuts or fruit to a menu item) or swapping an ingredient for another one (like spices or frosting), we can accommodate you.

  • No, we cannot sells items that require cooling. This includes pumpkin pies, sweet potato pies, cheesecakes, lemon meringue and key lime pies. Sorry!

  • We accept a large number of payment options for your convenience.

    We accept cash, check, credit card, Paypal and Venmo.

    If you are paying with credit cards please let us know ahead of time so we can prepare the card reader.

  • Where did it go? What happened to

    it? Our specials change from season to season but don’t fret. If you are looking for something that was on the menu, like our chocolate sugar cookies, the chocolate pizzelle, ma’amoul, koulourakia, gingerbread bundt cake, don’t worry, just ask.

    We most likely have all of the ingredients on hand, but to keep the menu fresh, we rotated it off the menu. Just ask about it and we can help.

  • Yes we did! But when we started we just sold pretzels.

    hat was before 2020! The menu has changed a lot since then and so we needed a new name.