“Because of its history of regional political division,” Wikipedia tells us, “Italy specializes in many different kinds of bread, reflecting its great regional variation and widely different bread-making recipes and traditions. In general rolls are typical of the north, while large loaves are typical of the south, with those from Altamura in Puglia and Matera in Basilicata being particularly popular.” That explains why, during my press trip to the Basilicata we visited the Cifarelli bakery on Via Istria 17 in the Piccianello neighborhood of Matera, one of only four remaining bakeries with a wood-burning oven. Third-generation Massimo revealed the following professional secrets:
Massimo Cifarelli
Why are Altamura and Matera so famous for bread? Their breads are famous for different reasons. The bread in Matera is famous for its history and local traditions connected to bread as well as the “community” ovens where to bring your loaves to bake and the need for the loaf to have a certain shape which allowed for saving space in the oven so as to bake more loaves. The bread from Altamura is famous because you can find it in many cities throughout Italy and because it’s good quality bread made with durum wheat flour.
The differences between these two types of bread? They are similar and have four of the same ingredients: durum wheat flour, sourdough, water and salt, but their production is different and this determines the differences in the final product.
What are your first memories of bread? When I was ten or twelve years old I remember that our bakery made much more bread than it does now. They used to bake three ovens full every day (now we bake two) and the last oven full was ready at 4 PM every afternoon, so my father would go to the bakery at 3:30 to open the oven door to let the vapor out so the bread would dry well for another 30 minutes. We used to eat at 2:30 so I’d see my father rush off as soon as he’d finished eating. His helpers arrived at the bakery around 4 PM.
Who was the first Cifarelli to make bread? My grandfather Antonio. He was the apprentice to a baker in the “Sassi” who didn’t have any children so left his business to my grandfather. My great-grandfather had been the cook for a noble family of those times. It’s important to point out that my grandfather did not make bread; he only baked the dough that the housewives made at home! In 1981 my father made the change from “oven” to “bakery” and started to make bread.
Massimo and Giovanni Cifarelli
Can you please tell me the story of the Cifarelli bakery? My grandfather moved his oven three times. From 1926 to 1936 it was located in the Sasso Caveoso inside the deconsecrated church of San Leonardo. Then from 1936-1947 he moved to a hypogeum or underground space in the Sasso Barisano facing the church of Sant’Agostino and then he moved here to the then very new neighborhood of Piccianello. As I said before, in 1981 he changed from baking other people’s dough to making his own bread and in 2005 we opened a second store in a still newer zone of the city. Most recently, in 2015, we opened a third store in the center of Matera in Piazza San Francesco near the Cathedral.
So the first Cifarelli bakery was in “The Sassi”? Yes, in a deconsecrated church with votive icons on the walls. It still exists and we’re hoping to reacquire it, if we can.
So the female Cifarelli never worked in bakery? No, no, that’s not true. My grandmother kneaded the dough that the housewives brought her to bake so as to give it a “typical” shape before putting it in the oven. More recently, my mother worked every morning at the bakery helping out. She stopped coming when I entered the business.
Now the family owns the bakery and three stores? We make our bread exclusively here in Piccianello, where we still have a wood-burning oven. Our other two outlets, however, aren’t your typical bread stores, because we also sell savories, pastries, and prepared foods.
Pizza ripiena
Fried dough
Taralli
Your typical day? I get to the bakery here a few minutes before 7 in the morning. I try to get here before my helpers who arrive at 7 sharp. I check the bread that’s been put in the oven by my helpers on the night shift and I go over with them any problem they may have had: overcooked bread, undercooked bread, over-leavened bread, under-leavened, weak yeast, strong yeast, bad flour). Then I go into the store to check out the shelves, and note down what’s sold-out on a blackboard in our laboratory, and that becomes the bread we bake that day. From there there’s nothing else to do, but produce bread. I prepare the necessary dough with my helpers and we begin our daily production of biscuits, taralli, and flat breads. In short everything we need to fill our orders and more until 2 PM. After my lunch break Around 5 PM I come back to the bakery to check things out and to supervise production. Sometimes I go to our other stores getting home between 7:30 and 8 PM.
How many loaves can you bake at once? If you know how to do it you can output 240 loaves weighing a kilo (2.2 lbs.) each, but in my grandfather’s time, he could get 350 kilos in the oven. That’s because his loaves weighed between 3 and 5 kilos. You have to understand that one loaf weighing 5 kilos takes up less space in the oven than 5 loaves each weighing one-kilo.
The oven’s temperature? Between 260-270°C (500-518°F) when you put the loaves in the oven and, after two hours of baking, the temperature is lower or c. 190° C (375° F).
What type of wood do you use? We used to use Mediterranean maquis, but now it’s forbidden to cut it so we use oak wood.
How many wood-burning ovens like yours are there in Matera? There are still four including ours. It’s time-consuming and hard work to maintain a wood-burning oven, so many of my colleagues have replaced theirs with a gas or electric oven.
How many types of bread do you bake and which is your bestseller? Two types: the typical one from here with three peaks and the flatter one called “pugliese”; however there’s no comparison between how much we produce of each per day: 400 kilos (880 lbs.) of the first or typical one and only 50 kilos (110 lbs.) of the second type (“pugliese”).
What grain do you use and where does it come from? As a member of Consorzio di Tutela del Pane di Matera (Consortium for the Tutelage of Matera’s Bread) we’re obligated to its rules to use local grain, 30% of which is durum wheat Senatore Cappelli. We only use wheat from Basilicata, most of which comes from near Genzano, Acerenza, Stigliano, and Irsina.
What do you like the best about your job? First and foremost the enormous satisfaction I get from “creating” an excellent product. Secondly, that our clientele congratulates and thanks us. This gives me the energy to carry on in spite of the many difficulties that, unfortunately, I have to face.
The least? Having to deal with unpleasant subjects and decisions like price increases. It frequently happens that our clients tell us that elsewhere similar products cost less than us. Sometimes I overhear people making nasty or offensive comments like “it’s robbery” that implies we are thieves. It used to be that I confronted these accusations almost with pleasure because I was convinced that I could explain the reasons and make my clients understand them. But now, after 18 years of hard work, I’m tired and I don’t like confrontations anymore so I close the argument with a laconic “Unfortunately it’s an expensive product.”
You said that you didn’t sell to supermarkets, hotels, or restaurants, so who are your customers? 98% of my clients are private citizens of Matera. The other two percent are restaurants owners who come in person to our stores to buy bread. We don’t give them discounts, only a receipt that they can deduct from their expenses.
I’ve seen that you have a website; since when and why? Who uses it? We’ve had a website for several years, but only in the last year have we started to use it for sales. Our prices on it are a bit higher than if you come in person. In the future we will probably use it more and more for sales, but first we have to figure out how much extra work it gives us. For now it’s in the trial stage.
If you and your brother had not followed in the family’s footsteps, what professions would you have chosen? After my diploma in accounting I went to work in an office and soon realized that deskwork was not for me. Instead my brother has a university degree in computer science. After graduation, he spent a year or so looking for work in this field, but without success. So slowly but surely he became interested in the organizational, management, business side of our business and that’s his job.
You and your brother have daughters, so will the Cifarelli business close when you retire? Speaking in all honesty I hope that my daughters and my niece don’t follow in our footsteps because with each day our work gets more challenging and difficult not to mention that we earn less and less for the amount of effort we put in and the responsibilities we undertake.