Puccia is a traditional bread from Salento, an area of Puglia. It’s a street food classic made with pizza dough baked in a wood-fired oven and used to make sandwiches, then filled with local produce.
It truly is an art, and from Apulia it’s arrived in Milan thanks to Puccia & Pasta, presenting a new format that combines fast-food prices and speed with local specialties like the capocollo di Martina Franca (Slow Food - IGT), caciocavallo Silano Dop, Faeto Ham (recognized P.A.T. traditional Italian food products), stracciatella di Putignano, rare meat from the Podolica cow, Slow Food Presidium. To make the best version they use sourdough, type 1 flours (nutritionally more balanced: less refined, with more bran and wheat germ that make it digestible. Also, the dietary fiber helps maintain good intestinal functioning and modulates the glycemic impact when ingesting food) and need super long leavening times.
Puccia with meatballs
Puccia con le polpette makes a sandwich out of a classic Apulian recipe that of meatballs in sauce. Made of chopped beef pulp, eggs, stale Apulian bread soaked in milk and grated Canestrato cheese. These are the simple ingredients required to make the Apulian meatballs. To keep them light you can avoid frying them and cook them directly over very low heat in a simple tomato sauce. Here’s the recipe.
Apulian meatballs recipe
Ingredients
For the meatballs:
12 oz minced beef meat
2 eggs
4 tablespoons grated canestrato cheese (or pecorino)
1 clove garlic, minced
1 glass warm milk
5 oz stale rustic bread
salt, pepper, chopped parsley
For the sauce:
1 US quart tomato sauce
1 finely chopped onion
1 clove garlic
salt, pepper, basil, Pugliese extra virgin olive oil
Method
Soak the dry bread in warm milk.
Squeeze it and mix it with the eggs, cheese, meat, and crushed garlic.
Season with salt and pepper, form the meatballs about 4 cm in diameter and leave to rest for half an hour.
In the meantime, fry the garlic and onion in a large frying pan and cook until transparent.
Add the sauce and cook over low heat for half an hour.