Pane di Altamura

Pane di Altamura is made from remilled durum wheat semolina, mother yeast, water and sea salt. That is the entire ingredient list, and the protected designation of origin granted in 2003 makes it legally binding: no fat, no oil, no commercial yeast, no dough improvers. It was the first bread anywhere in Europe to receive DOP protection.

The wheat has to be grown on the Alta Murgia, the limestone plateau inland from Bari, in five named towns: Altamura, Gravina in Puglia, Poggiorsini, Spinazzola and Minervino Murge. At least eighty per cent must come from four durum varieties: appulo, arcangelo, duilio and simeto. That clause is the reason the crumb is yellow. Durum grown on thin, dry, calcareous soil is high in protein and carries carotenoid pigment; no soft-wheat flour can fake the colour.

Two shapes are permitted, both old. The tall one, folded over on itself and baked with the flap upwards, is called u sckuanète in dialect. The low, wide one is a cappidde de prèvete, the priest's hat. Minimum weight is 500 g, but the loaves that matter start at one kilo and go up to two or three, because mass is what makes the bread keep.

Wheat, and very little else, but wheat with a depth that soft-wheat bread does not reach. The crumb is faintly sweet and distinctly nutty, closer to good pasta than to a white loaf, with a mild lactic tang from the mother yeast that never tips into the aggressive sourness of a San Francisco sourdough.

The crust is the other half of the experience: three millimetres thick, dark, brittle at the ridges and slightly bitter where the wood fire caught it. It shatters rather than tears, and the contrast with the dense, moist crumb is why Altamura loaves are cut thick.

By day four it has become something else: a dry, absorbent structure that tastes of almost nothing on its own and of everything you pour over it. That is not decay, it is the intended second life.

Cut it thick, a centimetre and a half, with a long smooth-bladed knife. Serrated knives shred the crumb. The traditional grip is to hold the loaf against your chest and pull the blade towards you, which is more controlled than it sounds and is how bread is still cut in Puglia.

On day one, eat it with olive oil and salt. Nothing else improves it. From day two it is bruschetta bread: grill the slice over coals, rub it with a cut clove of garlic, then oil and salt, and only then tomato if you want it.

From day three the Murgia repertoire opens up. Cialledda: stale bread barely dampened with water, then tomato, cucumber, red onion, olives, oregano and oil, left to sit twenty minutes. Hot cialledda: bread in a bowl, boiling water with bay and garlic poured over, an egg poached in it. Pancotto: bread simmered in the water used to boil turnip tops or potatoes, finished with oil and chilli.

What is left becomes pangrattato, breadcrumbs toasted in olive oil and scattered on pasta across the south where cheese was once a luxury.

A one kilo loaf holds about a week at room temperature and a two kilo loaf closer to ten days. Nothing special is needed: stand it on its cut face on a wooden board, or keep it in a cotton or paper bag. Cling film and sealed plastic bags are the mistake, because the loaf keeps giving up moisture for days and in plastic that moisture stays against the crust and softens the shell that was protecting the crumb. The fridge is worse for any bread, since chilling speeds up starch retrogradation and the crumb firms faster there than on the counter.

It freezes very well, but slice it first and freeze the slices in closed portions; they toast straight from frozen, while a whole frozen loaf thaws badly in the middle. To bring back a slice three or four days old, flick a few drops of water onto the crust and give it eight minutes at 180 °C. Stale semolina bread is not treated as a problem in Puglia: it is the base of half the local dishes.

Start with the crumb colour. It has to be a full straw yellow, never white and never cream: a real semolina loaf does not have a pale interior, and when it does, soft wheat flour went into the mix. The crust runs at least three millimetres thick, hard and dark amber turning brown on the ridges, and it should sound hollow when you knock the base. Inside, the holes are irregular, of different sizes and with thick walls; a fine even crumb is the signature of baker's yeast rather than a semolina starter.

Shape matters too. The accavallata fold should be sharp with the upper flap clearly lifted, and a smooth round loaf simply was not shaped that way. On the label, Pane di Altamura DOP is a protected name and arrives with the red and yellow European logo and the name of an authorised bakery. Altamura-style, or semolina bread alla altamurana, is a different and usually much cheaper product. Pane di Matera, its neighbour in Italian shops, is horn shaped and a separate DOP.

In Italy, buy it in the zone: any bakery in Altamura or Gravina, sold by weight, whole or halved. Elsewhere in Italy the good delicatessens and several supermarket chains stock genuine DOP loaves, usually vacuum-packed, which costs you some crust and no flavour.

In the US and UK the bread travels by air or comes part-baked and frozen, so check what you are buying. Italian importers and specialist online grocers ship whole DOP loaves; Italian delis in cities with a southern Italian community are the better bet. Expect roughly 9 to 16 dollars per pound in the US, or 12 to 20 pounds per kilo in the UK.

The label is the check. Genuine bread carries the words Pane di Altamura DOP, the red-and-yellow EU mark and the authorised bakery's reference. Anything sold as 'Altamura-style' or 'tipo Altamura' is a different product: often good, usually half the price, never the DOP. Buy the biggest piece you can use: half of a two-kilo loaf keeps far better than a whole 500 g one.

Altamura itself, in the historic centre, where the medieval claustri, enclosed courtyards opening off the street, still have working bakeries in them and the cathedral commissioned by Frederick II in 1232 stands two hundred metres from the ovens. Buy a half loaf, have it cut, and eat it in the street with a piece of burrata.

Gravina in Puglia, inside the same DOP zone, has its own bakeries and a dramatic old town built above a gorge. All around is the Alta Murgia National Park, with dry-stone walls, sheep pastures and cardoncelli mushrooms in autumn.

Matera is twenty kilometres away, which makes a two-bread day entirely feasible: the DOP loaf in the morning, the IGP loaf of the Sassi in the afternoon.