Many years ago, I spent a number of months working in Italy in the Abruzzo region about an hour and a half east of Rome. The bread they always brought out for breakfast in the hotel I stayed at had a chewy but open crumb and a very thick crust. It was delicious with meats and cheeses. This was the bread that got me into bread making, but I've never found a recipe for it (though Tartine probably comes the closest). This bread haunts my dreams.
Then I came across this link the other day that talked about Aquilano Bread ("Pane Aquilano”).
http://www.italian-traditions.com/en/food-beverage/recipes/53-food-beverage/tipica-food/bread
The second picture in that section really looks like the bread I remember. However, try as I might, I cannot find a recipe for it. Does anybody have a recipe for this bread, or a suggestion for another possibility for what this bread of my dreams might be?
Thanks!
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/51376/last-pane-di-altamura-breakthrough
So, it's homemade bread from the Aquila region. It probably is made simply with flour, water, salt and yeast (fermented dough, biga, whatever), and like many Italian regional breads it seems to be heavily dependent on the type of local grain and flour, but being from a mountainous region is likely durum.
I just had a read through the Italian section of Daniel Leader's "Local Breads". Briefly, he indicates that the keys to most regional Italian breads are the biga and the flour. The biga is described as 45% water to flour, with half a percent of yeast, fermented in a cool place for 8 to 16 hours. This provides a sweet (low acid) starter. Also, he says Italian recipes typically contain a high percentage of big, sometimes up to 90%! The biga is made fresh for every batch.
The flour is the other key, but Leader indicates that Italian doppio zero (or double 00) is pretty much equivalent to minimally processed, unbleached flour here in North America, and that used for bread is typically around 11% protein (but different kinds of breads may use lower protein flour). Of course, the Altamura bread and others use local durum, very finely milled (the mills are stacked and the grain goes through a series of rollers to grind it finer and finer).
Good luck with your searching (and/or experimenting)!
It looks like I have some experimenting to do! After sending my question, I found this link for a potato bread made in the same region. I don't think it is the bread I am looking for, but it looks ridiculously amazing!
Niko Romito's White Bread with Potatoes