“Sentiti a casa. Make yourself at home,” said Beppe, one of the owners of Panificio Di Gesù, as I stepped behind the counter and through the clear plastic curtains into the back of the bakery with my camera. 

I was back in Altamura, a small inland city in Puglia, where I had lived for a winter as an au pair almost five years before. The southern Italian hospitality that stole my heart then was pulling me back in yet again. As I walked around documenting the bakers, the dough, the wood and the oven, someone would hand me a piece of focaccia here, another piece of focaccia there.  Puglians always make you feel at home.