Puccia con verdure is the vegetable build of the Salentine round bread, and what defines it is that the filling has to supply on its own the fat, salt, and savour a cured meat would otherwise bring. The puccia is a soft, flattish Puglian wheat round, thin-crusted and barely seasoned, a deliberately plain vessel. Into it go the vegetables of the Salento kitchen: grilled aubergine and courgette, roasted peppers, sun-dried tomatoes, olives, sometimes a few leaves of bitter greens or friarielli, dressed in good oil. The structural point is that these are not a garnish around a protein but the whole content, so they must be cooked and seasoned to carry the sandwich alone. Without the oil and salt worked into the vegetables the puccia is bland; without the bread the dressed vegetables are a side dish. The two are arranged so a neutral bread and a fully seasoned vegetable filling complete each other.
Making it well is mostly about water and oil. The vegetables are grilled or roasted until their moisture has cooked off and their edges have caught, then dressed in oil rather than left raw and wet, so they bring richness and do not flood the crumb. They are layered with intent, a salty element like olive or sun-dried tomato set against the sweeter grilled vegetables, so the build has the contrast a meat would have supplied. The puccia is used soft and fresh, split into a wide pocket so the filling sits flat and the thin crust holds without cracking. Seasoning is deliberate because there is no cured meat to lean on: enough salt and good oil to make the vegetables read as a complete filling, not an afterthought. A weak version uses watery undercooked vegetables in stale tight bread and tastes thin; a good one is soft, generously filled, and built so the oil and salt of the vegetables stand in fully for the missing salume.
The close cousins stay inside the same puccia family and each is its own subject rather than a footnote here. There is the puccia con capocollo on cured pork, the puccia con carne di cavallo on horse meat, the version that adds a slab of mozzarella or primosale to the grilled vegetables for a richer build, and the same vegetables carried on an olive-studded uliata rather than the plain round. Each is the same soft-round-bread-meets-filling idea with one element changed, and each deserves its own article rather than being crowded in here.