Sourdough

Sourdough by Robin Sloan, 259 pages

Lois Clary is a programmer for a San Francisco-based robotics company when someone gives her a sourdough starter kit and then leaves town. Despite the fact that she's never cooked anything EVER (seriously — her diet consists largely of a slurpable nutrient drink called Slurry), she finds a cookbook and teaches herself how to make bread. Soon, she finds herself baking a top-notch sourdough loaf that lands her a place in the weirdest of farmers' markets. But the really odd thing is her sourdough starter, which doesn't behave like a normal starter; no, this one takes on weird shapes and colors...and sings.

This is a wonderfully quirky book, mixing the kinda-sorta possible with the eh-not-really possible with the unbelievably real (the Lois Club? Yeah, that one's real.) It's fun, it's light, and it makes me hungry for bread.