Chef Benjamin Baker scoring sourdough loaves

It may be a little too hot for most of us to crank up the oven to bake bread. But when you’re ready, consider using Chef Benjamin Baker’s recipe for sourdough bread, which begins with making sourdough starter.

Sourdough Starter

These are the basic steps to starting a starter. Honestly it can take a number of tries before you arrive a one that really works for you, and tastes good, too. Do not fret, practice and persistence will produce the results that you are looking for.

In a bowl

1. Take about 1/3 cup of flour and work in roughly 2 tbsp of water (spring or distilled is best).
2. Mix until this forms a soft dough.
3. Knead this dough for about ten minutes, to develop it’s elasticity (gluten development).
4. Place in a bowl and cover with damp towel.
5. Set in a slightly warm spot for a few days (80-85 degrees Fahrenheit).
6. Remove external crusty bits from dough and reserve the remainder.
7. Mix the remainder with roughly 1/4 cup of water, and a half cup of flour (6. and 7. are the refreshing process).
8. Repeat the kneading process.
9. Allow to sit for another 2 days, covered with a damp cloth.
10. Repeat the refreshing process, this time with roughly 1/4-1/2 cup of water, and a full cup of flour.
11. Allow to sit once more for about 8-12 hours.

You may use this to make your bread; always reserve some of your starter to refresh, in order to keep your culture alive.

How to keep the D’oh! out of making Sourdough Starter

Although making sourdough starter is basically very simple, a lot can go wrong–dumb stuff, really. And so the following tips are intended to help you navigate around some of the hazards associated with the care and feeding of sourdough starter.

1. Use a clear glass jar or bowl so you can see what’s going on with your starter.
2. Keep it clean! Containers must be properly sterilized before you begin. Chef Baker says not to use anti-bacterial soap, or any soap for that matter, to clean out the containers you plan to use for your sourdough starter. Instead, he uses steam, or boiling water, and says either will kill potential contaminants. The starter is particularly vulnerable early on.
3. Use filtered or spring water where possible. While most tap water is fine to drink, it tends to have chlorine in it, and chlorine inhibits yeast growth. And we’re aiming for your starter to attract and incubate wild yeast.
4. Whenever possibly–go organic. Why? It maximizes the concentration of microorganisms in your ingredients, and avoids preservatives, pesticides or fungicides that might have been used on the grains. Those substances may potentially inhibit starter growth.
5. Do not skip the refreshing steps when making starter. These steps are intended to add extra food to the container for the organisms you are culturing. Refreshing the starter simply means that you are adding additional flour and water to your container. You may have to throw out some of the starter that’s in the container to make room for the fresh stuff. Of course, you can always use what you remove.

Chef Benjamin Baker hold history in his hands

When Chef Benjamin Baker accepted the position as executive chef at Travaasa Austin, he brought the tools he valued most to his new job – a good attitude, a set of knives and a 167-year-old sourdough starter.

With his passion for baking breads and pastries and a dedication to seasonal, organic and local ingredients, Baker and his sourdough starter are revolutionizing spa cuisine.

However, Chef Baker doesn’t consider what he prepares as “spa cuisine.”

“What comes out of the Travaasa kitchen is simply good food prepared with care using quality ingredients.”

I had the pleasure of spending an hour or so with Ben one Sunday in July; we talked about life, love and the pursuit of mindful cooking, and baking bread with his historic sourdough starter.

He told me he is mindful of his responsibility to the starter that he brought with him from Hawaii, but which had its beginnings during California’s Gold Rush.

He says he feels the history of the foodstuff whenever he works with dough made with this precious substance.

The passion Chef Baker has for the work he does is palpable–and delicious. While I was at Travaasa, I had the opportunity to taste some of his amazing desserts, including a raw chocolate pie in which no ingredient was cooked; it was a revelation.

It was silky, creamy and had a deep, rich chocolate flavor. I believe the crust was made from Texas pecans. It was hard to believe heat never touched any of the ingredients.

But the real star that day was the bread.

I got to go behind the scenes and into the kitchen to witness him using the sourdough starter to bake beautiful loaves of bread. He had a container that probably could hold five gallons filled with with the living sponge, which made the process go quickly.

Unless someone gifts you with starter, which Ben told me is a tradition that solidifies friendships, you will have to make it yourself. It’s not hard, just time consuming, and we have a recipe for you to do just that on the website.

Once your starter is alive and kicking, you can have warm loaves of sourdough bread every day in just a couple of hours.

If you ever get a chance to meet and talk with Chef Benjamin Baker at Travaasa, please do. I thoroughly enjoyed our visit, and feel like we even forged a little bond.

He’s like a brother from another mother, he is.

Please join me as I talk with Chef Benjamin Baker about the care and feeding of living history in a loaf.

Chef Benjamin Baker, Travaasa Hotel and Spa

Chef Benjamin Baker is a big-hearted, humble man and mindful chef. You can taste it in the food he prepares at Travaasa Austin. His passion for food manifested early, and it’s been a lifelong pursuit.

In His Own Words

I began to realize my passion for food at a young age. Having such a large family, and being the oldest son (second oldest child), my older sister and I were put to the task of cooking for our siblings. I learned the many benefits of cooking and sharing food with other people and it rang true to my heart.

When I toured the California Culinary Academy (CCA)  in High School I felt as though I had come home. My dreams were compounded when I met some chefs and tried the exciting foods in the restaurant.

I received some stern “talkings to” by seasoned chefs at the school–they essentially attempted to scare us out of the industry altogether.

“No Holidays… no weekends… and say good-bye to all you love!”

I remember trying to solidify my resolve even then as a young kid, wondering if I had what it would take to make those types of sacrifices.

My father passed on when I still in High School, and with  him went my dreams of attending the CCA, but I was undaunted, and sought out teachers within the field for whom I could work and from whom I could learn.

At 17, I connected up with a chef in downtown San Jose, and began to help her cater lunches for the law firms in the area. This business picked up, and shortly after, I was managing the operation whilst playing in a rock band in my free time.

This pattern and pace continued until I was 19 (those two years seemed like a decade to my young impressionable mind), afer which time I decided it was time for a change. I left San Jose and went to the coastal areas of California. First the Vortex of Santa Cruz, and then up highway 1 to Mendocino county .

In Mendocino I worked with a chef  newly relocated from the island of Maui, helping to serve at his parents-in-law’s inn in Elk California. He had worked all over the island, his last job being the Ritz in Kapalua. Seeing my work ethic and knowing that I desired to keep moving (after a year) he encouraged me to move to the islands stating that I would work “like ten men” out there.

Maui was the next stop, and I had great luck staying employed: a stint at the Paia Fish Market, and Mama’s Fish House were the first jobs I took.

I trained with Roy Yamaguchi’s top Pastry Chef, Casey Lodgson for a good amount of time, which is where I was first introduced to working with Sourdough.

Later I did private Chef work for Tableside Chef’s and cooked dinners on the beach for newly married couples, and vacationers, which was such a wonderful experience.

Finally I got my foot in the door at the world famous Longhi’s as a baker. It wasn’t very long before I had taken over management of the AM shifts, and shortly after–the entire kitchen.

I also decided that it was time to play some more Rock music and began playing shows with a little three piece project.

At Longhi’s, I stayed doing winemakers dinners, and cooking for the many celebrities that came through the restaurant all year long. Once I had taken over the kitchen I decided that I wanted to go back to school, and enrolled in the Maui Culinary Academy.

This could have continued indefinitely, except for Zina, (my wife) had a troubling pregnancy that needed attention from a hospital better equipped than anything Maui had to offer. A relocation was necessary, so we chose Texas since Zina had a family network already established there. Zina was from San Antonio, and went to school in Austin and San Antonio.

Once in Austin it took some time to find decent work, but my connections from Maui, namely Peter Longhi, led me to Travaasa.

Here I am.