Inside Matera's ancient wood-fired bread oven

Getting to Matera is easy; it's not like it used to be. Navigating curves and winding its 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 an emotional, indescribable experience. Matera is an ancient city. Gazing at 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 the meaning and gives flavor to life. Leaving Matera without having tasted Buon Pane, or without taking home a one-kilo piece of it, is the mutilation of an often long, arduous, and costly journey: you leave without having seen, heard, smelled, touched, and tasted everything. What's included: Meeting at the ancient wood-fired oven 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) Gadget (screen-printed canvas bag and one kilo of croissant bread)