'Sourdough' works (see what I did there?) on a lot of levels -- it's a satire that deftly skewers the high-tech startup culture and zings "California cuisine" along with various other pretensions; it's a love poem to the amazing, frustrating, dynamic presence of the organic lifeform known as sourdough starter; it's the tale of a young woman realizing there's more to life than coding computer language 12 hours a day; and it's a magical-realism romp where high tech and high magic collide head-on and the mushroom shape rising over Alameda is not nuclear in nature.
Lois Clary is a simple Minnesota girl lured out to Babylon-by-the-Bay for a high-dollar job in a tech startup company with the modest goal of replacing human labor with robots. She sinks into it like a raisin into oatmeal, living, breathing, sleeping, and eating at a computer console, eschewing social contact, and existing on a "nutritional gel" called Slurry (whose name alone would be enough to put off most people). Her only human contact, in fact, is with the phone voice and delivery man from a local deli, who begin providing her with an amazing soup and sandwich combo. When the deli is forced to close, the owner presents her with a crock of the restaurant's sourdough starter, along with the basic equipment and instructions to bake her own version of the bread.
And things get ... interesting ... from that point onward. From Lois' investigations into the history and practice of breadmaking (sourdough subset) to making new friends (and ultimately opening up another career path) via her fragrant, crusty loaves, to discovering a literal underground artisanal market intent on completely revolutionizing food production, to trying to deal with an increasingly cranky and uncooperative starter, things get more and more surreal.
Light-hearted, crunchy, fragrant, and dripping with fun, this is a book to be savored in one sitting.
Lois Clary is a simple Minnesota girl lured out to Babylon-by-the-Bay for a high-dollar job in a tech startup company with the modest goal of replacing human labor with robots. She sinks into it like a raisin into oatmeal, living, breathing, sleeping, and eating at a computer console, eschewing social contact, and existing on a "nutritional gel" called Slurry (whose name alone would be enough to put off most people). Her only human contact, in fact, is with the phone voice and delivery man from a local deli, who begin providing her with an amazing soup and sandwich combo. When the deli is forced to close, the owner presents her with a crock of the restaurant's sourdough starter, along with the basic equipment and instructions to bake her own version of the bread.
And things get ... interesting ... from that point onward. From Lois' investigations into the history and practice of breadmaking (sourdough subset) to making new friends (and ultimately opening up another career path) via her fragrant, crusty loaves, to discovering a literal underground artisanal market intent on completely revolutionizing food production, to trying to deal with an increasingly cranky and uncooperative starter, things get more and more surreal.
Light-hearted, crunchy, fragrant, and dripping with fun, this is a book to be savored in one sitting.
