Science nerd-turned-foody, Nathan Myhrvold has just put out his latest self-published culinary opus, ‘Modernist Bread.’ Along with French Laundry chef Francisco Migoya, and a 22-person staff, Myhrvold has spent four years - and baked over 36,400 loaves - to produce the cookbook. Spanning the history of bread (what did the Ancient Romans eat?), as well as busting common bread myths (is it the water that makes NYC bagels taste so good?), Myhrvold’s tome is definitely comprehensive - but it also comes with a hefty $625 price-tag.

“There's plenty of recipe books that you can buy that I can't compete with. Those books are cheaper. Those books are smaller, and more portable,” Myrhvold told VICE News. “But if you care about ‘the why’. If you care about the history, if you care about those other things. Maybe I have a proposition.”

Myhrvold wasn’t always in chef’s whites - instead, was usually in a lab coat. A child science prodigy, he attended college at age 14, and worked with Stephen Hawking on the nature of space and time. He pivoted into tech, first as Chief Technology Officer of Microsoft, before he founded ‘Intellectual Ventures’ in 2000 - a controversial company that has filled court dockets and made headlines for patent trolling, as well as trying to solve some of the world’s biggest problems (think trying to eradicate malaria big).

But lately, Nathan Myhrvold has been obsessed with food - putting his millions into cookbooks and cooking - now, specifically looking into bread.

“Bread is something that we historically all wanted to be cheap. It was a huge part of society. Eat nothing but bread. So you get this attitude that ‘Oh my God, bread has to be cheap’. And if a baker charges $10 for a loaf of bread, or if a restaurant charges five or ten dollars as an extra charge for bread, people get angry,” Myhrvold, who is already working on his next cookbook, said. “But if I said, ‘OK, well, should the risotto be cheap?’ Most people say ‘no’. Risotto is this wonderful dish, the chef slavers over it. Well, why wouldn't that apply to bread?”

‘Modernist Bread’ follows on from his similarly priced 2400-page cookbook ‘Modernist Cuisine’ in 2011, that was less narrow in culinary scope than his newest incarnation, and a critical success - although he won’t disclose how many copies of the book were actually sold.

But does the world need brioche-flavored vodka, or to learn how to make bagels with topics that will stay on and won’t litter the bottom of the brown paper bag? Check out the VICE News Tonight segment to find out more.

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The most expensive cookbook about bread...ever

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