The Wheat Lands of Puglia and the Tavoliere

The Tavoliere is the broad plain around Foggia in the north of Puglia, the largest level expanse of southern Italy, and it has long been the grain country of the peninsula. Carol Field, in The Italian Baker, places the bread of Puglia within this landscape of wheat, and treats the loaves of the region as the product of its cereal fields as much as of its ovens.

The plain of the Tavoliere is low, open and dry, and its character is that of a country given over to cereals. Wheat, above all durum wheat (Triticum durum), is the crop that defines it, and the sweep of fields around Foggia stands behind the reputation of Puglia as the granary of the south. Field presents the bread of the region against this background: the loaves are large, sturdy and made to last, and they reflect a farming country in which bread was the centre of the table. The bread of Puglia is characteristically made from semolina, the milled endosperm of durum wheat, rather than from the soft wheat flour of the north. Field describes the pane di Altamura as the great loaf of the region, a dense, golden-crumbed bread with a thick, resistant crust, made with semolina and a natural starter. The coarse, yellow grain gives the crumb its colour and its long keeping quality, and the thick crust protects the loaf so that it stays good for days. The same grain lies behind the dry pasta of the region. Orecchiette and the other hand-shaped pastas of Puglia are made from durum semolina and water, a dough that is firm enough to be pressed and dragged into shape by hand. Bread and pasta in Puglia therefore come from one source, the hard wheat of the plain, and each makes use of the strength of that grain in its own way. The climate suits the crop. Summers are hot and dry, which ripens the wheat to a hard, high-protein grain, and the flat ground allows cultivation on a large scale. The loaves that Field records, shaped in rounds and baked in wood-fired ovens, are those of a country that grew its own flour and baked in quantity, often for a whole household or village at one time. To read the bread of Puglia is therefore to read the land. The Tavoliere supplies the grain, the grain gives the semolina, and the semolina gives the loaf, the pasta and the plain, filling dishes that have long sustained the region.

The taste of Pugliese bread is that of durum semolina: a sweet, nutty wheat flavour, a crumb of deep yellow and a crust that is thick and well baked. At table the loaf is eaten with olive oil, with vegetables and with the sauces of the region, and its firm texture holds up to them without falling apart.