  We introduce a new formulation of baryon chiral perturbation theory which
improves the ultraviolet behavior of propagators and can be interpreted as a
smooth cutoff regularization scheme. It is equivalent to the standard approach,
preserves all symmetries and therefore satisfies the Ward identities. Our
formulation is equally well defined in the vacuum, one- and few-nucleon sectors
of the theory. The equations (Bethe-Salpeter, Lippmann-Schwinger, etc.) for the
scattering amplitudes of the few-nucleon sector are free of divergences in the
new approach. Unlike the usual cutoff regularization, our 'cutoffs' are
parameters of the Lagrangian and do not have to be removed.
