Jim Franks thinks your open-crumb, cold-proofed, exquisitely lamed sourdough boule is bullshit.
These are all bakers who have managed to make a living at the difficult and often dangerous business of running commercial bakeries—and selling bread made from hard grains that have been milled without removing the nutritious bran that surrounds the germ, unlike the majority of commodity flour produced in the United States.
He didn’t find his purpose until after a friend showed him how to make sourdough and he made it on his own for the first time. “I saw it rise and it was this crazy click,” he says. “I was in love. I was up for three nights reading about flour on Wikipedia. I was just lost in it. I had done so many things before, I was afraid to tell anybody, ‘I’m a bread maker now.’”
That’s particularly challenging when it comes to grain, but it’s changing. Michigan, he says, has become a powerhouse when it comes to einkorn, a difficult-to-grow and hard-to-process variety that’s resurged among other ancient grains in the new American artisanal bread arsenal. Franks says he’s making the only 100 percent einkorn bread within 2,000 miles. He’s found other small farmers and millers in Wisconsin, Indiana, and Illinois selling buckwheat, spelt, oats, and corn; and for sweeteners, molasses, sorghum, maple syrup, and honey.
Eschewing the cold proofing that leads to the wide-open airy bread dominant on Insta-Sourdough, Franks ferments these loaves at room temperature—which leads to what he correctly describes as “full but airy” bread, especially for whole grain. He bakes them in rectangular loaf pans, rejecting the digital hegemony of the round boule. “It’s better for whole grain but also because pan breads are more accessible than the artisan boules that everyone makes. People know how to cut them and use them and they sorta trick people into thinking it’s more regular bread and not pretentious.”
