A Bocca di Forno – Visit to Matera's Ancient Wood-Fired Oven

Let's meet the bread of Matera. Getting to Matera is easy; it's not like it used to be. Navigating curves and winding through narrow streets can be fun these days. Riding trains that look like modern antique models with tiny, improbable tracks, departing from Bari and arriving in Matera through the unique landscape of the Murgia, can be a thrilling, indescribable experience. Matera is an ancient city. Observing caves carved into the rock and blocks of tuff forming houses, imagine the men who created this spatial jumble of solids and voids, narrow streets and steep stairways, to climb the ridge of a canyon cut by a stream. What did they eat, and how did they sustain their bodies? When you have to eat in Matera, you eat bread. For Matera, bread is everything. It is a timeless bread, the fruit of millennia of elaboration, which nourishes the body every day, reminds us of meaning, and gives flavor to life. Leaving Matera without having eaten Buon Pane or without taking home a kilo of it is the mutilation of a journey, often long, arduous, and costly; one leaves without having seen, heard, smelled, touched, and tasted everything. Details • Meet at the Antico Forno a Legno (Wood-Fired Fork) at Via Santo Stefano, 37 • Tour of the bakery's departments and equipment • Brief history and presentation of the ingredients • How Matera bread is made • Tasting (Bread and mortadella, wine, and other delicacies) • Gift (Screen-printed canvas bag and a kilo of croissant bread) Price €39 per person Maximum 10 people Wood-Fired Forno - Via Santo Stefano, 37, 75100 Matera www.paneepace.it