Existential Bread

Overview

Jim Franks is a baker and a poet who’s written a love story about bread, which is to say he’s written a life story about listening, learning, trying, failing, adapting, and above all, caring. Through humor, history, relentless curiosity, and refreshingly unsentimental poetry, Existential Bread teaches there are many ways to bake a loaf, just as there are many ways to live a life.

Reviews

“EXISTENTIAL BREAD is a collected bakers’ common sense from Jim Franks, one of the most knowledgeable people about modern baking in the United States today.”  —Matt Kedzie, Owner-Baker, Starter Bread

"Part love letter, part philosophical manifesto, Jim Frank’s book is an earnest and charming exploration of our human relationship with bread and what it takes to make it." — Fiona Cook, Author, The Wheel of the Year

"In a world of samey-samey, this book is different. Jim Franks doesn't want you to make his bread (by providing glossy photos and detailed recipes); he wants you to make your bread (by sharing his practice and what he has learned). In a world of "shoulds" and "bottom lines", Existential Bread creates space while providing structure for you to fall in love with the ancient act of making bread. Plus, it's a very fun read.” — Abra Berens, Author, Ruffage, Grist & Pulp

"EXISTENTIAL BREAD is an immeasurable joy. Occupying a space between prose and poetry, it lays out a helpful set of directions, while still casting out beautiful elegiac koans like 'imagine how the bread feels.’  It is an ode to finally letting go. To letting the simplest elements transform themselves into the rich, deep, almost-religious experience of baking." — Jason Hammel, Lula Cafe

“I didn't want to like this book. The casual and loose profanity had me clutching my pearls. And it's a cookbook written like one long poem. Yet, somehow against these odds I was charmed the further I got into it. There's a shitload of fucking excellent information about bread in this book. I dig it.” — Brooks Headley, Superiority Burger

“This book is a long and wonderful poem to bread and the process of creating it. If you're looking for formulas and pictures, this might not be the book for you. However, if you want to know HOW to make bread and WHY to make bread and WHAT kind of bread is unique to you, this is definitely the book to digest. By breaking down the myriad of choices a baker makes in the creation of a simple loaf of bread, Jim shows that those decisions teach us more about who we are as creative individuals, as humans beings wrestling with the real existential question of what it means to be alive and find meaning in a world that tries to uniform, monocrop and commodify everything. Bread is existential… and it's also just bread!” — Rob Segovia-Welsh, Chicken Bridge Bakery

“Like all Jim Franks’ endeavors this book is infuriating, iconoclastic, and delightful, frequently all at the same time. A zen koan in free verse, it’s a book-length rejection of the canard that one can learn to bake bread from a book. You can skip years of trial and error simply by overlooking that irony, and believing him.” — Mike Sula, Chicago Reader

“EXISTENTIAL BREAD posits the practice of fashioning this food as a unique metaphor for life, underlining the idea that the creativity of making your own loaf has more to do with setting things into motion & letting them bloom naturally than it does with hyper-vigilance or the lust for result. Franks' book invites an openness to experimentation that guides inspiringly. Having spent many a joyful evening with Jim discussing bread, philosophy, art, music, life & bread again, I feel readers will rise from EXISTENTIAL BREAD with new perspectives on baking & the deeper meanings of this ancient food so easily taken for granted. Break bread with Jim!” — Bill MacKay, guitarist

Author Biography

Jim Franks is a baker and a poet who’s written a love story about bread, which is to say he’s written a life story about listening, learning, trying, failing, adapting, and above all, caring.