It’s safe to say that Jim Franks’s Existential Bread is unlike any bread book you’ve ever read. The ideas and information are conveyed in idiosyncratic poetry with more than a pinch of profanity, but we here at Janie's Mill love how Franks explains different grains, and the importance of locally grown grains and freshly-milled whole-kernel flours. And we agree with Franks that there are as many ways to make a loaf as there are ways to live a life -- and that, as his first epigraph says:“Love is not only the most important ingredient:it is the only ingredient that really matters.”—Tassajara Bread Book You can learn more about Jim and his book in this New York Times article by Minju Pak, who says that the book is "about bread baking, but only insofar as bread baking is a metaphor for life."
