Sourdough (with bonus story the suitcase clone) - robin sloan

From Robin Sloan, the New York Times bestselling author of Mr.

Penumbras 24-Hour Bookstore , comes Sourdough , a perfect parable for our times ( San Francisco Magazine ): a delicious and funny novel about an overworked and under-socialized software engineer discovering a calling and a community as a baker.

Includes the new story The Suitcase Clone Named a best book of the year by NPR, the San Francisco Chronicle , and Southern Living Lois Clary is a software engineer at General Dexterity, a San Francisco robotics company with world-changing ambitions.

She codes all day and collapses at night, her human contact limited to the two brothers who run the neighborhood hole-in-the-wall from which she orders dinner every evening.

Then, disaster! Visa issues.

The brothers quickly close up shop.

But they have one last delivery for Lois: their culture, the sourdough starter used to bake their bread.

She must keep it alive, they tell her--feed it daily, play it music, and learn to bake with it.

Lois is no baker, but she could use a roommate, even if it is a needy colony of microorganisms.

Soon, not only is she eating her own homemade bread, shes providing loaves to the General Dexterity cafeteria every day.

Then the company chef urges her to take her product to the farmers market--and a whole new world opens up.