Altamura (Italy)
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Two experienced hands encourage the boldness needed to push a novice’s fingers into the stretchy dough and push the focaccia into the folds of the pan before mashing the juicy tomatoes and garlic. Sprinkle with dried oregano and drizzle with olive oil, then you’re ready to bake in the wood-fired oven.
My teacher is Graziella Incampo, Italy’s answer to Giulia Child. Incampo, 89, and childhood friend Teresa Calia, 88, have become social media sensations, garnering millions of Instagram views and drawing millions of visitors to the area’s oldest bakery.
The quirky video shows the pair dancing to electronic music, playing the guitar and mixing margaritas in a wheelbarrow. Several yards of bread are stuffed with fresh stracciatella cheese, topped with grated tomatoes and finished with coppa ham. For Parmigiana’s cooking lesson, Calia dons a vintage military helmet and Incampo dons yellow goggles as they fry sliced eggplant and whisk egg wash with a fork attached to a drill. Bellissima!
Their “set” is a shady barrel vault and medieval courtyard across a narrow stone lane from the Antico Forno Santa Caterina, founded in 1307 in the medieval walled city of Altamura. This is part of Forno’s ‘Bread Experience’, a bespoke culinary foray into history, bread making, cheese making and herbal remedies.
However, you don’t have to take a tour to sample the freshly baked delicacies. The food prepared for the video is shared with people at the eatery seated at tables under the vault, feasting on focaccia, orecchiette and sandwiches purchased from the bakery. Lines to enter small shops sometimes extend down the lanes and onto Altamura’s main pedestrian street. When the line is long, Incampo and Calia serve fresh crackers on platters to those waiting.
Many visitors, like Galina Nankova from Plovdiv, Bulgaria, discovered Forno on social media. “I took it as a sign. I was planning a trip to Bari with my boyfriend in a month,” she wrote on Instagram Messenger. “I have added Altamura and especially Forno Santa Caterina to my must-see list.”
Nankova and other visitors rave about meeting the nonnas, who have 45 grandchildren. “I had no idea it would be this amazing!” I texted Juliana Nardella from Brazil, who visited earlier this year. “This place is authentic and hasn’t been modified in any way for tourism. My family and I sat down for lunch and had Santa Caterina oven-baked bread and focaccia, orecchiette with tomato sauce and roasted chicken. For dessert we had homemade cookies. They were all delicious!”
“And the big surprise was that Graziella and Teresa were there! They were so nice.”
The wildly popular video started “as a kind of joke,” said Giacomo Barattini, Incampo’s nephew who created the reel on his iPhone. He and some local friends were saddened by the closure of the town’s oldest bakery and decided to do something about it. They shared resources and reopened in 2023.
Barattini enlisted the help of his great-aunt and her friends to help spread the word with their contagious playfulness. The nonnas had so much fun making the videos that it became a daily ritual.
“The two nonnas are very funny and happy every day. They laugh a lot and laugh a lot. That’s their philosophy of life,” explains Barattini. “I thought, ‘Why not combine traditional cooking with their philosophy? The little things are good.” Translated into a message of condolence. Usually the action conveys the message, but sometimes Barattini adds an English caption: “Every day I ask them: What do you want to make?” And we do it. ”
In the process, Incampo and Caria became unofficial ambassadors for this rarely visited city of 70,000 people on the western edge of Puglia. The Apulia caves near Matera and the conical trulli houses of Alberobello are standard tourist stops, but Altamura has been bypassed even by Italians who are familiar with Altamuraman, a Neanderthal fossil discovered nearby in 1993. Until the video starts, of course.
Both “stars” grew up in the surrounding countryside, just beyond the grain mills and silos that now surround the old town. Like most young women of the time, they worked in the fields and in home kitchens, learning which vegetables produced the richest flavor. Incampo’s mother shared generations of starter yeast secrets. Mixed with durum semolina flour and baked in an ancient wood-fired oven, it creates pane di altamura, an early version of sourdough.
Since at least the 1st century BC, the distinctive yellowish bread has been admired for its crumbly crust that protects its chewy, nutty center. Thanks to its durability, bread was a necessity for farmers and shepherds of old, who slept in the fields for days on end while caring for their livestock. The bread has a Protected Designation of Origin certificate from the European Union, meaning the authenticity can only be made in Altamura using local ingredients such as semolina flour, water, salt and natural starter.
Previously, bread was made at home and then transported to one of Altamura’s commercial ovens – a huge cavern heated by burning oak wood – to be baked. Each family put their own stamp on their bread to distinguish it from other breads.
Altamura still has dozens of traditional wood-fired ovens serving baked goods. Forno Santa Caterina’s products are baked and sold in a small shop two steps down from the street. It’s the only place you can buy products. Traditional pane dough is folded into a rounded “priest’s hat” shaped loaf. As part of the bread experience, I got to try their own bread. It’s harder than it looks. The folds get too tight and you have to start over before the “hat” is deemed ready to bake in the oven.
Although the stamps are no longer necessary, they are part of the tradition that Barattini is trying to preserve. “I thought about selling it online, but it’s not just about money. I want people to come and see how the bread is made. If you don’t do that, you won’t understand.”
New Yorker Elaine Tanera and her husband Damir Ouznis agree. Frequent travelers often seek out gastronomic tours as a gateway to local culture. A Google search led me to the Santa Caterina website, where I signed up for a 4-hour baking experience. “It seemed like a great way to spend a day looking at centuries-old ovens, experiencing a local dairy, and seeing how mozzarella and burrata are made,” Tanella said.
From the taste of warm brioche fresh from a 15-foot-long baking paddle to a tour inside a 300-square-foot clay oven, the visit was, in Tanzella’s words, “absolutely amazing.”
Then we moved on to making pasta. “When I watch people make orecchiette (little ears), I always think, ‘Oh, I can do that, I can do that too.’ My husband and I sat down, and the nonnas were nice, but they used to ‘tell’ us, no, our ‘little ears’ didn’t work.” ” (They weren’t alone; after my own sad attempt, Incampo banished me from the pasta-making table.)
From there, Tanela and Uzunis were guided to a local market. “We love spicy food, but the chili peppers knocked our socks off!” — and at nearby Stella Disecca family dairy and artisanal cheese shop, we sampled the award-winning Parrone di Gravina. From the back window, they watched as third-generation cheesemaker Angelo Antonio DiCecca removed fresh stracciatella from the vat and tied it in graceful knots for shipment to the area’s top restaurants.
Over 90 million people watch this Italian grandma cook
Pierino Carlucci’s market stand was a favorite stop for both Tanella and me. Carlucci is something of a local legend, as is his great reception, as well as his herbal remedies (local men swear they cure kidney stones). Most days, he also sells locally produced snails, which have small bumps hidden inside their brown shells. When Tanella asked how he made them (tomatoes, red garlic, oregano, peperoncino), Carlucci explained that his wife was cooking them that day and insisted that the couple join them for dinner.
This kind of friendliness is a hallmark of Altamura. Nonnos, nonnas, young parents and teenagers gather for the passeggiata, a traditional evening walk. A group of elderly people are discussing sports and politics at their usual perch near a shop window. A young couple drinks an Aperol spritz in a bar across the square from the medieval Duomo. By evening, only a handful of tourists remain, staying in guesthouses and the only hotel in town.
Barattini, 32, and his 30-something friend run the bar. He quit his job as a government lawyer in Rome and returned to his hometown full time.
“I love my city,” he said. “I want them to experience real life, this real place.”
Earlier this year, church elders asked Barattini and her friends to help protect the future of Pasticceria delle Monache, a patisserie in Altamura where nuns have baked round almond wedding cakes known as nun’s boobs since 1597. There are currently few nuns, and the church and Barattini and her friends want to ensure the tradition continues.
“Tits” are made according to nuns’ recipes and filled with pistachio, chantilly or chocolate custard. Barattini and friends officially opened in late July with their own spin on gelato, cafe and pastries.
Of course, the patisserie has its own Instagram feed. But you can’t compete without your Nonna.
