The Excellence of bread made from durum wheat flour
“Altamura’s bread” – which achieved the CEE DOP mark (Denomination of Protected Origin) in compliance to the CEE Regulation n.2081/92 – is made exclusively with “durum wheat re-milled semolina”. It is the result of a wise blending of different kinds of durum wheat grown on the central-north Apulian plateau, known as the “Murgia”, and on the Matera hills. These areas are the most extended and important for the cereal production in Apulia and Basilicata.
Rich in history and tradition, “Altamura’s bread” owes its goodness not only to the raw materials (to which we have to add water, salt and yeast), but also to the traditional method applied in its making. The method consists in five phases: 1. Kneading; 2. Moulding; 3. Leavening; 4. Shaping; 5. Baking in wood-burning brick ovens or with other sources of energy.
Today “Altamura’s bread” is the center of an intense industrial production, capable of responding to the needs and trends of the market, though maintaining a strong sense of continuity with tradition by keeping its original identity and working skills within a technologically modernized and an ever increasing automated context.
One of the most significant aspects of “Altamura’s bread”, together with its flavour and digestibility, is its prolonged capacity of preservation (the bread keeps its nice taste for two/three days from the date of production).
In its traditional low shape (“a cappid de prèvete” – i.e. dialect for priest’s hat)”,“Altamura’s bread” has an outside crusty and crunchy brown crust and an inside cell-like straw-coloured soft part.