Sourdough by Robin Sloan

This slim novel was long listed for the Booker Prize, which is a list that I try to read most if not all of.  They tend to be well written and not too focused on place but more so on people and dynamics.  So that is where I started.
The tale is of a Lois who works at a technology company that is developing robotic arms.  Her life consists of work, sleep, and she doesn't exactly eat.  She takes in nutrients in the form of a chemically constructed nutritive gel that has nothing going for it except that it is straight forward and  without objection.  You could also call it tasteless and soulless.  The opposite of exhibiting terroir.
In step Beoreg and Chaiman, two foreigners from a land never heard of before who run the Clement Street Soup and Sourdough out of their apartment.  One cooks and the other delivers.  They make one kind of bread and one kind of soup, and Lois is hooked.  When they move on to their next abode in a far away city in a far away land they leave her with the sourdough starter, and so begins Lois' journey back to the land of her ancestors, where food needs to be nurtured and cared for rather than assembled in the lab.  She comes to life herself as she devotes herself to the starter that she has been entrusted with.