In Buddhism there’s a spirit realm known as the Hungry Ghosts and they’re considered to be the spirits of insatiable desire. These lost souls are starving (both literally and spiritually) and search in vain for sensual fulfillment. They try to satisfy their hunger + emptiness with things they genuinely don’t need and so they’re never gratified. They’re depicted as fat, bloated tear-dropped shaped creatures with bulging eyes, thin tiny necks and pinhole sized mouths that nothing can pass through. Some Buddhist cultures hold yearly festivals to release the Hungry Ghosts from their hell so they can wander the earth to seek food.

Given all this isolation and despair – it’s somewhat disconcerting why the owners of a bakery in Northampton, Massachusetts – Cheryl and Jonathan — named their business after these miserable spirits. But Jonathan explained it with a smile ‘It’s because the Hungry Ghost is yeast.’ It took awhile for that to sink in and I grew dizzy from the haze and heat coming out of his wood-burning oven so I bit into a gnarly slice of his 8-grain sourdough. He went on: ‘Yeast always wants more no matter how much you feed it.’ Feeding it — as in his sourdough starter — requires water and flour twice a day because that’s what yeast needs to grow, multiply and produce the carbon dioxide that makes bread rise. It’s called proofing.

There are a lot of variables in proofing yeast and getting dough to rise – from the temperature, humidity, to the organic flour Jonathan uses and the wild yeasts in the air as well as timing – and altogether this is what makes his bread interesting but not always ‘perfect’. Sometimes the dough will over-proof when it’s left too long before baking and it becomes flaccid and loose and so it won’t expand in the oven. The result would be a dense loaf that’ll still taste good – and maybe even better because it’s more fermented and complex – but it won’t look pretty. (This happens to me all the time.) But when Jonathan’s dough over-proofs he says he’s got two choices, ‘I can either throw it against the wall or I can make something out of it.’ So at the Hungry Ghost Bakery, the code word for taking this disaster dough and making it into something nurturing and wholesome is ‘French Fold’. Jonathan will flatten it out – maybe it’s the rye or the sprouted wheat that had gotten away — and then fills it with combinations like apricot + sage, pear + rosemary or fresh cranberries + chocolate. All of these creations come out making something beautiful out of what went wrong, what’s in season, what’s not boring and what’s available at the corner market.

With all this incredible bread coming out of this bakery – there remains the darkness associated with its name: The Hungry Ghost – the spirit of insatiable desire. But the way I see it — Jonathan the baker is both the servant to and the redeemer of these spirits — because day in and day out, every time he bakes-off a loaf of bread – it’s about the yeast and its final exhale. The Hungry Ghosts are released by the fire – free to mingle with the wood smoke + fresh bread smell that swirls up and out of his chimney and into our world. It really true what Jonathan says, ‘You can’t pretend that everything in the world is beautiful – the Hungry Ghosts are here among us whether you want to admit it or not.’


Hungry Ghost Bread is located at 62 State Street in Northampton, Massachusetts. Their phone number is 413.582.9009.