Sourdough by Robin Sloan

Sourdough
by Robin Sloan
MCD, 272 pages, 2017

Lois Clary is used to being wooed. As a female programmer, she gets recruited to work for General Dexterity, a San Francisco based company that specializes in robotics and changing the world. But soon Lois finds her work/life balance thrown off by her soul-sucking work. Her stomach hurts all the time. She's not eating well. She's not sleeping well. But things begin to look up when she finds the magical "Double Spicy" soup and sandwich combo from Clement's Street Soup and Sourdough. The food feeds her soul as well as her body, as does the friendship of the the charming brothers who own the restaurant. When the brothers are forced to leave the country, they give Lois the Clement's Street sourdough starter. Though Lois never bakes, she has resorted to drinking nutritive gel to avoid it, she decides to learn how to make sourdough bread. In her adventures with the mysterious and idiosyncratic Clement's Street starter, Lois not only finds a talent for baking bread, but she finds herself being wooed again.

This is a delightful and quick read. I start it and couldn't put it down. Not only did I crave spongey carbohydrates the whole time I was reading, but I also thought about my own work/life balance and what I could do to add more joy to my life.