Existential Bread Book Talk & Signing

Join us for an evening of bread-adjacent conversation with Jim Franks, author of Existential Bread. Jim will talk about his experiences staging with bread bakers across the country and be interviewed by fellow breadhead and writer Andrew Janjigian, author of the Wordloaf Newsletter and the forthcoming Breaducation (Ten Speed Press, Fall 2026).Signed books can be purchased at a discount below, and will be available at full price at the event. More about the book and Jim below. Preorder the book at a discount here!

https://www.elmendorfbaking.com/.../hungry-ghost-bread...

Doors open at 6pm and this event is open to all. However space capacity is limited and will be available on a first come first serve basis. If the shop is full we will ask that you wait outside until space becomes available.

More about the book and Franks from the publisher:

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. His debut book builds on a life-consuming passion for quality bread: what goes into it, physically and emotionally.

Based in Chicago, Jim is known locally for selling out of loaves quickly, but across the country he’s worked under nearly every bread baker equally obsessed with 100 percent whole grain. 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.

Host or Publisher Elmendorf Baking Supplies