In short. Puglia is a wheat region before it is anything else, and its bread is built to last: loaves that keep for a week, frise baked twice so they keep for a year, taralli that keep more or less forever. This is bread as a way of storing time.
Everything here starts from durum wheat, the hard golden grain that grows on the Tavoliere plain. It gives semolina rather than soft flour, and semolina is why Apulian bread has that dense yellow crumb and that thick, almost burnt crust.
Bread that had to survive the week
Before ovens were domestic, families in the Murgia baked once a week in a communal oven, and the loaf had to hold. That single constraint shaped everything: the size of the loaf, the thickness of the crust, the choice of grain.
The bread of Altamura is the most decorated of them all — in 2003 it became the first bread in Europe to be granted a DOP, which fixes the wheat varieties, the sourdough, the shape and the wood-fired oven in a legal specification.
Bread baked twice, so it keeps for a year
The frisella is the answer the Salento gave to the same problem. A ring of bread is baked, cut horizontally, then baked again until it is dry as a biscuit. It travels, it stores, and it comes back to life in seconds under running water.
- What a frisella is, and why it is the summer food of the region
- How friselle are made, and how long to wet one for
The mistake everyone makes once. A frisella goes under the tap for a few seconds, not into a bowl of water. Soak it and you get porridge. It should still resist when you bite it.
Taralli, and the rest of the baked things
Small rings of dough made with flour, white wine and olive oil, boiled briefly and then baked. They are the thing every Apulian household has open on the table, and the thing most visitors carry home. The recipes for the ones you bake yourself — taralli, focaccia, panzerotti, puccia — live under bread and pizza, with the rest of the recipes.
This page sits under Apulian food and produce, with the other things the region grows and makes.
