What started as a kids' craft table has turned into the most hotly contested competition in town.

You can smell Sweet Pea's before you see it. Two blocks off the courthouse square, tucked between a hardware store and a shuttered insurance office, the little bakery releases a cloud of cinnamon and warm yeast every morning at 5:30 sharp. If you're walking your dog past the alley, you'll catch it. If you're driving with your windows down, same thing. It's become the town's unofficial alarm clock.

Marla Hutchins opened Sweet Pea's eleven years ago after spending two decades baking for other people's restaurants. She named it after her grandmother, who kept a tin of pea seeds on the windowsill and swore they brought luck. "I didn't have a business plan," Marla told me, wiping flour off her hands during a rare lull. "I had a lease and a mixer and a lot of stubbornness." The first month, she sold nine loaves of bread. Last Tuesday, she sold out by 8:40 a.m.

The Regulars Who Built the Place

Ask anyone at Sweet Pea's who really runs the show and they'll point to the corner table where the same four retirees have gathered every weekday since the bakery opened. They call themselves the Crumb Bunch. Dale brings a crossword, Frank brings opinions about the weather, and Ruth keeps a running list of everyone's grandchildren's birthdays on the back of a receipt. Marla pretends to be annoyed. She refills their coffee for free.

Then there's the school drop-off crowd, the nurses from the clinic on Third Street, and the crew from the highway department who show up in orange vests at exactly 6:15. Marla knows most orders by heart. She starts pulling the cinnamon rolls when she sees certain cars pull into the lot. "You learn people," she said. "That's the whole job, really. The baking is just the excuse."

What to Order and When to Come

If it's your first visit, get the buttermilk biscuit with honey butter. It's the thing people drive in from the next county for, and it's only available until they run out, which is usually before nine on Saturdays. The sourdough is a close second, and the seasonal fruit hand pies, which rotate based on whatever Marla finds at the farmers market, have a quiet cult following.

Come early. Come hungry. Come with cash, though Marla finally got a card reader last spring after years of customer nagging. And if the line is long, don't worry. It moves fast, and you'll probably end up talking to whoever's in front of you. That's not a bug at Sweet Pea's. It's the whole point.