Hungry Ghost Bread, Northampton, MA

My favorite local-to-me bakery is Hungry Ghost Bread on State Street in Northampton, MA. All their bread is made by hand with sourdough culture, organic flour and filtered water, and baked in a huge wood-fired oven. Well, made mostly by hand: there is a large and noisy dough mixer to bring together each 75-lb. batch of dough. From time to time there are dynamite cookies and pastry goods in addition to a variety of excellent bread.

Some photos and a write-up from the fall of 2005 is available at http://www.boston.com/travel/explorene/massachusetts/articles/2005/09/21/it_takes_a_village_baker/ . Hungry Ghost is an interesting place to hang out briefly whole choosing which bread to buy. There's often John Coltrane of Bob Dylan music filling the space, and the weekly bread schedule usually has a poem by lead baker Jonathan Stevens printed on the back. Stevens and Cheryl Maffei are the proprietors, ever-ready to explain their wares or comment on the passing scene.