Pane di Matera

Pane di Matera is made from remilled durum wheat semolina grown in the province of Matera, mother yeast, water and salt. It received IGP protection in 2008. The specification requires that at least a fifth of the semolina come from local durum varieties and landraces (Cappelli, Duro Lucano, Capeiti, Appulo), which is the commercial reason those seeds still exist: Senatore Cappelli yields badly and grows tall enough to flatten in wind, and without a bread that demands it nobody would plant it.

Two shapes are allowed: the horn (a cornetto), with one raised point, and the tall crested loaf. Two weights are allowed, one kilo and two. The crust must be at least three millimetres thick, the crumb is straw yellow, and it carries the feature that makes this bread instantly identifiable: huge, irregular holes, some two or three centimetres across, far larger than in any other southern semolina bread.

The city it comes from is carved into a limestone ravine. The Sassi of Matera were emptied by law in 1952 as a national disgrace, restored from the 1980s, made a UNESCO site in 1993 and European Capital of Culture in 2019. Through all of it the bread never stopped being made.

Sour, in a way most Italian bread is not. The mother started on fruit gives a clear lactic tang on the finish, sharper than Altamura, though still nowhere near a West Coast sourdough. Underneath it is unmistakably durum: sweet, nutty, with the same flavour family as good dried pasta.

The texture is the surprise. Those big holes mean the crumb is light and chewy rather than dense, with thick, glossy walls between the voids, so a slice has an uneven bite: soft, then air, then soft again. The crust is hard, thick and slightly bitter, blackest at the tip of the horn, which is the piece locals fight over.

After three or four days it dries without going mouldy and turns into something structural: an absorbent, faintly acidic sponge that holds oil, tomato juice and vegetable broth without dissolving. That, not the fresh loaf, is what half the local recipes are built on.

Slice it thick, two centimetres, and rest each slice on its crust. Thin slices are mostly air and tear apart, which is a direct consequence of those holes.

Fresh, it takes olive oil, salt, and crumbled peperoni cruschi, the sweet dried peppers of Senise that shatter between your fingers and behave like a spice. That is the local move, and it is better than it has any right to be.

From day three the real repertoire starts. Cialledda fredda: bread torn by hand, barely dampened, then tomato, onion, cucumber, olives, oregano and oil, rested twenty minutes. Cialledda calda: bread in a bowl, boiling water infused with garlic and bay poured over, an egg poached in it. Pane cotto: bread simmered into the water used for turnip tops or potatoes.

On 1 August the neighbourhoods make crapiata, a pulse-and-grain soup ladled over stale bread. And the last crumbs are fried in oil into mollica fritta and scattered on pasta with anchovies: the poor south's parmesan.

This loaf was designed to be baked once a week, and the combination of durum semolina, high hydration, sourdough acidity and a thick crust is what makes that work. Keep it at room temperature, cut face down on a board or in a cloth or paper bag, and a whole one to two kilo loaf stays soft in the middle for five to seven days. What is happening across that week is water moving outward: the crumb gives up moisture and firms, while the crust takes it on and gradually loses its crack, so the loaf goes softer outside and drier inside at the same time.

A plastic bag speeds up the second half of that and turns the crust to leather within a day. The fridge is worse still, because the starch firms fastest at temperatures just above freezing, so refrigerated bread goes stiff overnight. For longer keeping, slice it first and freeze the slices for one to three months, toasting them straight from frozen. A whole loaf sprinkled with water and put into a hot oven for five minutes recovers its crust for an hour or so.

Two shapes carry the name: the tall horn, the cornetto, and the high dome scored with one to three crests. Loaves are big, a kilo or two, never a small tin loaf. The crust is at least three millimetres thick, dark brown and genuinely hard, and it should crackle rather than yield when you press it. Cut it and the crumb is deep straw yellow, not white, because it is made entirely from durum semolina, with large irregular holes and a clear sour smell from the natural starter.

Outside Italy the pale, soft, white crumbed loaves sold as Italian bread or ciabatta are soft wheat and a different thing altogether. The genuinely close relative is Pane di Altamura from just over the Puglian border, also durum and also sourdough, but a separate DOP with its own shape. Sourdough made from strong white bread flour has the acidity without the yellow crumb. The label to look for is Pane di Matera IGP; Matera style means it is not. In Matera it costs 4 to 6 euro a kilo, and £6 to £10 a loaf in Italian bakeries abroad.

In Matera, from the bakeries in the Piano, the upper town, rather than the souvenir shops in the Sassi. Ask for half a loaf and have it cut for you. Elsewhere in Italy, good delicatessens and some supermarket chains carry vacuum-packed IGP loaves.

In the US and UK it is much rarer than Altamura: a handful of Italian importers ship it, usually the two-kilo size because nothing smaller justifies the freight. Expect roughly 10 to 17 dollars per pound in the US, or 13 to 20 pounds per kilo in the UK.

Check the label for Pane di Matera IGP, the blue-and-yellow EU mark and the producing bakery. Two weights are legal, one kilo and two. A 300 g roll sold as Pane di Matera is not one. 'Tipo Matera' means a loaf shaped like it that does not meet the specification.

Matera itself. Buy the bread up in the Piano, buy a piece of Pecorino di Filiano or Canestrato di Moliterno, and walk down into the Sasso Caveoso to eat it looking across the ravine.

Several of the old communal ovens cut into the tufa are still visible in the Sassi, and some have been restored and can be visited. The cave houses, cisterns and rock churches around them (Santa Maria de Idris, Santa Lucia alle Malve) were the economy that produced this bread.

Outside town, the Murgia Materana park on the far side of the gorge has the caves and shepherd tracks, and the Crypt of the Original Sin, frescoed in the ninth century, is about twenty kilometres away.

Go on 1 August if you can, when the neighbourhoods still cook crapiata in the street. And Altamura, with its DOP loaf, is twenty kilometres away: the two-bread day is an easy half-day trip.