|
|
|
Pasta made from durum is firm and provides a consistent cooking quality. Whether it’s the appetizing aroma of a steaming bowl of orecchiette pasta or the warm, sweet aroma of homemade bread, the Pugliese know how to produce magic from their bounty of wheat. As essential to the Italian kitchen as a pasta pot, Apulian olive oil is one of the finest olive oils in the world. Olive oil and table olives are one of the main agricultural products of this region, which accounts for 40 percent of Italy’s output of olive oil. For a simple taste of Puglia, tear off a generous piece of a local rustic bread, such as Altumura, and dip it into one of the many provincial varieties that range in flavor and intensity such as Coratina, Cima di Bitonto, Cellina di Nardó, Cima di Mola, or L’Olio di Peranzana. Pasta and bread play a fundamental role in Pugliese cuisine and in Puglia food – and Pane di Altumura DOP is at the helm of this tradition. Altamura bread—a staple food of the peoples of the Alta Murgia region in Apulia—was traditionally made in very large loaves. In the old days, it was customary to knead the dough at home and then take it to public ovens to be baked. In order to distinguish the loaves, the bakers would stamp them with the initials of the head of the family that owned the dough before placing them in their ovens. Pane di Altamura is a very crisp, fragrant bread. Its crumb, the soft part of the bread, is the color of straw and soft to the touch. Its most distinctive characteristic, however, is that it keeps for a long time, an essential quality for a bread that, dipped briefly in boiling water and dressed with olive oil and salt, provided nutrition to peasants and shepherds for a week or more in isolated farms scattered in the hills of Alta Murgia. The earliest written document describing the Altamura bread is Horatio's "Satires" in which the Roman poet recalls that during a trip to his native land in the spring of A.D. 37 he tasted "the world’s most delicious bread—so delicious, in fact, that the discerning traveler stacks up on it for the rest of his journey." In an era closer to ours, the 1527 statute of the town of Altamura dedicates numerous paragraphs outlining the duties of the town's bakers, including the taxes they had to pay to the authorities.
|
Puglia food - Apulia food.
Compared to other Italian regions, Puglia cultivates most
types of wheat, but durum wheat is its main crop. Most dried pasta is
made from durum wheat, the hardest of all wheats. (The word “durum”
comes from the Latin word “durus,” meaning “hard.”) Durum wheat’s density,
combined with its high protein content and gluten strength, make it the wheat of
choice for producing premium pasta
products (Barilla pasta is made from 100% durum wheat).