The Perrone family has been baking bread in Matera since 1890. When the government evacuated the Sassi in the 1950s — displacing thousands of families from the cave dwellings they had inhabited for centuries — Gennaro Perrone opened a modern bakery to carry the tradition forward. Today his two daughters, Patrizia and Sabrina, run Il Forno di Gennaro .
The Experience
The workshop begins with the story of Matera told through bread — using vintage photographs and images to trace the tradition of bread-making in the Sassi. Then you get hands-on: with the help of master baker Enzo, each participant kneads, shapes, and bakes their own loaf of Pane di Matera, finishing with a tasting and a glass of local wine.
The Bread
The Pane di Matera has always been the symbol of the city — a central, indispensable element of daily life, considered a sacred meal. Women would knead great loaves weighing five kilos, enough to feed the family for an entire week, and stamp them with a wooden stamp bearing their family’s initials before carrying them to the communal wood-burning ovens of the Sassi.
Those communal ovens were among the few spaces that genuinely belonged to women’s social life. The bread was women’s work — and the more soft and fragrant the loaf, the more the woman who made it was admired. Yet the stamps bore the initials of the male head of the family. The women made the bread. The men’s names were on it.
