Jim Franks is not a professional baker, because there are no such things as professional bakers. He is also not your father and never will be, nor is this a cookbook full of stories and recipes. 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 as there are many ways to live a life.