Pugliese

Pugliese refers to the southeastern Italian region of Apulia (Puglia in Italian), but the variations on loaves with this name are endless. Many of the versions I’ve seen in the United States are similar to ciabatta—sometimes they actually are ciabatta, but are called pugliese just to differentiate them from the competition. What is the same is that both of these breads, along with many others, fall into the category of rustic breads, which we define as hydration in excess of 65 percent, usually approaching 80 percent. In Italy, where the flour is naturally more extensible than the very elastic North American flour that we use, there is no need to overhydrate. But here we need to pump more water into the dough in order to stretch the gluten strands, giving the loaves their distinctive big-hole structure and delicious nutlike flavor. One distinction between ciabatta, which originated in the Lake Como region of Lombardy (northern Italy), and pugliese is that pugliese breads are usually baked in rounds rather than in the slipper shape of ciabatta. The French version of a rustic bread, pain rustique, is also slightly elongated, but more of a bâtard than a slipper shape. Those, along with the pain à l’ancienne baguette (page 191) and the very elongated stirato and stubby pain rustique (pictured on page 135, made from the ciabatta dough), are all rustic breads, each with its own shape and ingredient makeup. An important distinction of the true pugliese bread, and one not often seen in American versions, is the use of golden durum flour, finely milled and packaged as fancy or extra fancy durum flour. Fancy durum is milled from the same strain of durum wheat as the sandy semolina flour that is sprinkled underneath hearth loaves and used in pane siciliano (page 198), but it is milled more finely. There are bakeries in Apulia that make this bread with 100 percent fancy durum flour and some that use a blend of durum and regular bread flours. In the following formula, I suggest a blend, but feel free to play around with the proportions, moving even into a 100 percent durum version when you feel adventurous. The challenge for anyone tackling this bread is getting comfortable with wet dough. Once you do, you will find it difficult to resist the desire to make rustic bread all the time; the softness and pliability of the dough give it a wonderful feeling in the hand. Combined with the flavor enhancement of long fermentation, this formula brings forth a loaf that is so dramatic, so delicious, and so much fun to make that it will forever change your standard of what constitutes great bread.