It takes a village baker

The year-and-a-half-old Hungry Ghost, whose center is a giant wood-burning masonry oven edged with tiles hand-painted by local kindergartners, has become the village meeting place here. Customers who stop by become regulars, and Stevens is always up for a chat -- about what's going on in the town, politics, poetry, and music. In a squat ivy-covered brick building on the fringes of Smith College, the bakery offers loaves of the sort that might have been made by peasants centuries ago. They contain four basic ingredients: organic flour (wheat berries in one of the loaves come from a grower in neighboring Gill), sourdough starters, water, and sea salt.

This weekend, the bakery will host its second annual ''Wonder Not! Bread Festival" with other local growers and artisans (see Page E4), a larger version of the informal Friday night open houses that Stevens and his partner of four years, Cheryl Maffei, host now.

The 43-year-old Stevens, loose and lanky with wiry muscles and hair twisted back in a wispy bun, is at the bakery most days from early morning until long past dark. ''I don't even have time to remember to go to sleep at night," he says. The baker is shaping and slashing loaves, humming along to John Coltrane -- CDs are slipped into an old boom box -- and with a long wooden peel, pulling batches of hot bread from the oven. He taps the bottom of every finished loaf to hear the characteristic hollow sound of baked bread.

It might be a rosemary round, semolina with fennel seeds,8-grain bread, rye, raisin, and, on Fridays, challah. On Sundays you can often find scones; other days, jam flower cookies. This time of year you might see an apple gallette, or other rustic pastries.