The Italian grandmas winning Instagram at nearly 90

Teresa Calia, left, and Graziella Incampo prepare a focaccia. The two nonnas have drawn millions of views on Instagram. (Giacomo Barattini via CNN Newsource)

ALTAMURA, Italy — A pair of practiced hands pushes novice fingers into the stretchy dough, encouraging the boldness needed to coax the focaccia into the pan’s creases before mashing in juicy tomatoes and garlic. After a sprinkling of dried oregano and a generous splash of olive oil, the pan is ready for the wood-fired oven.

My teacher is Graziella Incampo, Italy’s answer to Julia Child. At 89, Incampo and her childhood friend Teresa Calia, 88, have become a social media sensation, drawing millions of Instagram views and heaven-knows-how many visitors to this region’s oldest bakery.

Quirky videos showcase the pair as they dance to electronic music, play a guitar and mix margaritas in a wheelbarrow. They fill a yards-long loaf with fresh stracciatella cheese, grate tomatoes on top and finish it off with coppa ham. For their cooking lesson on parmigiana, Calia dons a vintage war helmet while Incampo wears yellow goggles as they fry up sliced eggplant, whipping the egg wash with a fork attached to a drill. Belissima!

Their “set” is a shady barrel-vault and medieval courtyard across a narrow stone lane from Antico Forno Santa Caterina, founded in 1307 in the medieval walled city of Altamura. It’s part of the forno’s “Bread Experience,” a bespoke culinary foray into history, baking, cheese-making and herbal remedies.

But you don’t have to join the tour to sample the baked bounty. The made-for-video dishes are shared with noshers who have snagged a table under the vault, where they indulge in focaccia, orecchiette and sandwiches purchased from the bakery. The line to get into the small shop sometimes stretches down the lane and into Altamura’s main pedestrian street. When the queue is long, Incampo and Calia fill a platter with fresh-baked crackers and serve them to those who are waiting.

Everything was delicious

Many visitors, like Galina Nankova of Plovdiv, Bulgaria, found the forno on social media. “I took it as a sign. Within a month I had planned a trip to Bari with my boyfriend,” she wrote via Instagram messenger. “I made sure to add Altamura — and especially Forno Santa Caterina — to our must-see list.”

Nankova and other visitors rave about meeting the nonnas, who count 45 grandchildren between them. “I didn’t expect it to be so wonderful!” texted Juliana Nardella of Brazil, who visited earlier this year. “The place is authentic, nothing modified for tourism. My family and I sat down to lunch, with breads and focaccia baked in the Santa Caterina oven, as well as orecchiette with tomato sauce and roast chicken. For dessert, we had homemade cookies. Everything was delicious!

“And the big surprise: Graziella and Teresa were there! They were very kind.”

The wildly popular videos started “as a kind of joke,” says Incampo’s great-nephew, Giacomo Barattini, who creates the Reels with his iPhone. He and a group of hometown friends were lamenting the closure of the town’s oldest bakery and decided to do something about it. They pooled resources and reopened it in 2023.

Barattini engaged his great-aunt and her friend to help spread the word with their infectious sense of fun. The nonnas enjoyed making the videos so much, it became a daily ritual.

Nonna wisdom: ‘The little things are good’

“The two nonnas, they’re very funny and happy every day. They laugh a lot, they smile a lot. It’s their philosophy of life,” explains Barattini. “I thought, ‘why don’t I link the traditional food with their philosophy — that little things are good.’’ Each day that translates into a video cooking demo or holiday greeting or, when Pope John Paul II died, a condolence message. Action usually conveys the message, though Barattini occasionally adds English captions. “I ask them every day, what do you want to make? And we do it.”

In the process, Incampo and Calia have become unofficial ambassadors for this rarely visited city of 70,000 in the western reaches of Puglia. While the Apulian caves of nearby Matera and cone-shaped trulli houses of Alberobello have become regular stops on tourist itineraries, Altamura has been bypassed even by most Italians familiar with Altamura Man, the fossilized Neanderthal discovered nearby in 1993. Until, of course, the videos began.

The two “stars” grew up in the surrounding countryside, just beyond the grain mills and silos that today ring the old city. Like most young women of their time, they worked in the fields and the family kitchens, learning which vegetables produced the richest flavors. Incampo’s mother shared the generations-old secret of the starter yeast. Mixed with durum semolina flour and fired in the ancient wood-heated oven, becomes Pane di Altamura, an early version of sourdough.

Since at least the first century BCE, the distinctive yellowish bread has been lauded for its brittle crust protecting a chewy, nutty-flavored center. Thanks to its durability, the bread was a staple for farmers and shepherds of old who slept in the fields for days as they minded livestock. The bread has earned the protected designation of origin certification from the European Union, meaning the real thing can only be made in Altamura with local ingredients: semolina flour, water, salt and the natural starter.

In earlier times, the bread was made at home, then brought to one of Altamura’s commercial ovens — giant caves heated by burning oak — for baking. Each family imprinted its bread with a unique stamp so its loaves could be distinguished from others.

‘It’s not about the money’

Altamura is still home to dozens of traditional wood-fired ovens offering baked goods. Forno Santa Caterina’s products are both baked and sold in the tiny shop two steps below street level — the only place any of them can be purchased. The dough for the traditional pane is folded into a roundish “priest’s hat” shaped loaf. As part of the Bread Experience I get to try my hand; it’s harder than it looks. I make the folds too tight and have to start over before my ‘hat’ is deemed ready for the oven.

Though the stamps are no longer necessary, they are part of the tradition that Barattini seeks to preserve. “I thought about doing online sales, but it’s not just about the money. I want people to come here and see how the bread is made. You can’t understand it otherwise.”

New Yorkers Elaine Tanella and husband Damir Uzuniz agree. The frequent travellers often seek out culinary tours as a portal to local culture. A Google search took them to Santa Caterina’s website, where they signed up for the four-hour Bread Experience. “It sounded like a great way to spend the day watching an oven that’s been around for hundreds of years, getting to experience a local dairy and witness how mozzarella and burrata are made,” said Tanella.

From the taste of a warm brioche just off the 15-foot-long baking paddle to a look inside the 300-square-foot clay oven, the visit was, in Tanzella’s words, “just tremendous.”

Then they moved on to pasta-making. “Watching people make the orecchiette — little ears — always looks like, ‘Oh, I could do that. I could do that.’ My husband and I sat down, and the nonnas were gentle, but they ‘told’ us that well, no, our ‘little ears’ did not turn out.” (They weren’t alone; after my own sad attempts, Incampo banished me from the pasta-making table.)

From there, Tanella and Uzuniz were led through the local market — “we like spicy food but the peppers just knocked our socks off!” — and the nearby dairy of the family Dicecca and artisanal cheese shop Stella Dicecca, where they tasted the award-winning Pallone Di Gravina. Through its back window, they watched third-generation cheesemaker Angelo Antonio Dicecca pull the fresh stracciatella from the vat and tie it into the graceful knots for shipping to the region’s top restaurants.

Preserving traditions

For Tanella and for me, the market stand of Pierino Carlucci was a favorite stop. Carlucci is something of a local legend, as much for his booming welcome as his herbal remedies (local men swear they cure kidney stones). Most days he also sells the local earth snails, tiny knobs hiding inside brown shells. When Tanella asked how to cook them (tomatoes, red garlic, oregano and pepperoncino), Carlucci explained his wife was cooking them that day and insisted the couple join them for dinner.

Such friendliness is characteristic of Altamura. Nonnos and nonnas, young parents and teens turn out for the passeggiata, the traditional evening stroll. A group of old men argue sports and politics on their regular perch near a shop window; young couples sip Aperol spritz at the bar across the plaza from the medieval duomo. By evening, only a handful of tourists remain, staying in guest houses or the town’s single hotel.

Barattini, 32, and his thirty-something friends own the bar. He’s given up his job as a government lawyer in Rome and moved back to his hometown full time.

“I love my city,” he said. “I want people to experience the real life, this real place.”

Earlier this year, church elders asked Barattini and friends to help ensure the future of Pasticceria delle Monache, the Altamura patisserie where cloistered nuns have baked the rounded almond wedding cakes called “nun’s tits” since 1597. The nuns are few now, and the church, Barattini and friends want to ensure that the tradition continues.

The “tits” are made from the nuns’ recipe and filled with pistachio, chantilly or chocolate custard. Barattini and friends have added their own touches — gelato, caffe, pastries — and officially opened in late July.

Of course, the patisserie has its own Instagram feed. But without the nonnas, it can’t compete.

By Jane Wooldridge, CNN