Bread has always been a major product in Sardinia, both as a quality food and for its ritual meaning. Indeed, the exceptional nutritional value of durum wheat superfine flour, coupled with the favourable conditions created by mild temperatures and sunny fields, farmed with wheat crops, have made of bread an essential element of the island nutrition.

Baked for centuries in traditional wood-burning ovens, kneaded by expert women’s hands, it has been a fundamental food for ages, especially for the sustenance of shepherds, forced to stay away from home, and farmers, whose hard work required food of high nutritional properties.

Besides being an excellent food, bread is associated to special occasions and important moments in Sardinia, either focused on individuals or on a whole community (just think of newlyweds’ bread and Easter bread), to add a ritual value to the deliciousness and genuineness of its taste.

This is why the variety of typical bread is surprising, from the one meant for daily use to bread specifically made on the occasion of festivals, still linked to the different features of each geographical areas in the island.

Among the varieties of Middle Campidano, the most known is the civraxiu, characteristic large-sized bread with a rough dark crust and a soft, fragrant pulp. In Sanluri, it is produced in a particularly appreciated way, regulated by product specifications.

Commonly widespread in the whole island, as in the province, the coccoi is a bread of superfine flour, tasty and crispy, decorated with simple patterns in its ordinary daily version and in a more artistic and ancient style when meant as a feast bread.

Apart from Sanluri, Gonnosfanadiga is another renowned bread-making centre within the province. Every year, a specific fair focused on bread is organized, including other specialties of local bakeries: bread with olives (pani cun obia), bread with crackling (pani cun gerda), bread with ricotta (pani cun arrescottu), Easter bread with a boiled egg (coccoi ‘e Pasca), bread with tomato (pani cun tamatiga) and countless other delicacies.