The bread of Altamura
The first bread in Europe to get a DOP, in 2003. Remilled durum semolina, natural sourdough, wood-fired oven — and a rulebook that even specifies the water.
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The carrot of Polignano
Purple, yellow and orange, grown in sand, and a Slow Food presidium.
Pasticciotto: breakfast in Lecce
Shortcrust pastry filled with custard, eaten warm at a bar counter before nine in the morning.
Capocollo of Martina Franca
Cured pork neck from the Valle d’Itria: salt, black pepper, garlic and months of ageing.
Burrata: invented because of a snowstorm
Invented in 1956 on the Murgia, by a cheesemaker snowed in with milk he could not move. Burrata di Andria is IGP, and it lives 24 to 48 hours.
What to eat in Gallipoli
Sagne ‘ncannulate, the saffron scapece sold from wooden tubs, and a zeppola from the pastry shop.
What to eat in Puglia: a first-timer’s guide
Apulian food is vegetable-first, bread-obsessed and built on olive oil. Order the way people do here and the antipasti alone will be a meal.
Ferragosto in the sixties: when Apulians went to the sea on a lorry
Sides up, mattresses on the flatbed and the dishes balanced on people’s knees: before there were cars, Apulians went to the sea on 15 August on the back of a lorry. The story of a holiday invented in 1931.
July in Puglia: the festivals, the luminarie and the sagre
Opera in the masserie of the Valle d’Itria, the light cathedrals of Scorrano, John Legend at Ostuni and the octopus festival at Mola di Bari. What a Puglian July looks like, with the 2026 calendar as the worked example.
