By the 15th pizza, we were flagging. “Please ask Maria to stop,” I call out, my mouth half full of freshly-baked dough smothered in sweet passata laced with olive oil and salt, topped with fresh, juicy mozzarella.

But our young housekeeper (and local restaurateur by night) has no intention of letting the hot embers inside the 150-year-old pizza oven go to waste, nor the vast quantity of dough she’s pounded into submission that morning.

It was lunchtime on the third day of our Puglian ‘trullo’ holiday – a traditional dry stone hut with conical roof and neighbour-free view.

Bewitched by the charm, and relatively low price tag, of this white-washed 19th century former labourer’s cottage, I’d booked a late-summer holiday for seven friends earlier that year, and crossed my fingers for sunshine.

So on my first morning, when I pulled back the tiny wooden shutter from the glassless window of my bedroom, the gush of warm air off the olive tree-strewn landscape was as welcome as a cold glass of prosecco.

After two days of lazing by the pool and inspecting the contents of our estate, including bay trees, tufts of rocket, blackcurrant bushes and rosemary bushes, we’d woken this morning ready for action: a pizza-making lesson with our trullo’s housekeeper.

However, Maria seemed far more intent on setting us an eating challenge and for 40 long minutes we feasted on rocket, prosciutto, fennel-spiced sausage, sweet white onion-topped pizzas, washed down with young, raw-tasting red wine.

At the 22nd pizza, the only Italian-speaking member of the group heaved himself up, and limped over to have a word. The result? Two Nutella-covered dessert pizzas. Finally we were done.

Naturally, it was many hours before the group surfaced again, rolling out of beds, hammocks and loungers to congregate in the shallow end of the estate’s long pool.

Against the sounds of cicadas, with an early evening beer in hand, we discussed our varying degrees of ‘fullness’ with smug, glazed eyes. And in the background, our brains vaguely noted Maria’s car crunching on to the drive, as she returned to pop an earthenware dinner of chicken, bay leaves, potatoes and white wine into the gradually cooling oven, as a parting gift. Much later that evening, we served ourselves the juicy stew, before settling into another night of board games.

It might sound like a lazy existence, but as the days passed in our trullo enclave, the group’s growing appetite for supreme self-indulgence led to a surge in domestic activity.

Each day, the chosen voyagers to the outside world, via the slightly treacherous, bumpy country road, would return victorious with a discovery. In the nearby historic town of Alberobello, one-day-old mozzarella was unearthed, vegetables and eggs were procured with blinding smiles from a formidable Italian grandma who spoke no English, and a chance stop at the nearby hypermarket revealed a wine ‘fill-up’ service.

The group’s desire to cook up the stunning local produce, and drink high-quality wine, brought about an explosion of shopping, cooking and romantic, candlelit dinners – for seven.

“I never get to cook,” said one of my best friends happily, voluntarily whipping up yet another dinner in the tiny trullo kitchen. “I simply don’t get time." And as he stirred his enormous pot of native Puglian sausage, chilli peppers and onion pasta, whistling contentedly, the rest of us buzzed around him, grabbing candles, plates, serving dishes and glasses.

Bereft of wi-fi or television, we were relearning the art of making our own entertainment.

Southern Italy still feels relatively undiscovered in comparison to its tourist-trodden northern regions of Tuscany and Umbria. Local villagers speak little to no English, and days out, from wine tours to historic day trips, are not extravagant, signposted affairs.

Visitors should focus on the intimate, blissful beaches, affordable, yet mouth-watering restaurant meals, trullo hire for every price range and desire (homeaway.co.uk), and realise that it’s only a matter of time before everyone else catches on.

Although our group found it hard to summon up the energy for much concentrated tourist activity, we did manage a winery tour. Organised by the Wine Tourism Movement (movimentoturismovino.it), five of us bumped along narrow concrete roads, stopping at three major vineyards, two hours from our trullo.

Happily, our visit coincided with the autumn wine harvest, during which the doors of wineries are thrown open to visitors interested in exploring factories, cool cellars and, of course, tasting their wares.

“I’m getting mango, furniture polish, sandalwood, lime and black pepper on the nose,” said my friend confidently, as we sipped our first taste of Castel del Monte DOC red wine under the watchful gaze of the estate’s owner.

But an hour later, at our next vineyard, sitting opposite the Count of Andria (Onofrio Spagnoletti Zeuli, no less) his taste buds had taken a five-wine beating, and he merely uttered “Yum” about a bottle of sublime 14-month-old Terranera.

The designated driver looked murderous, and then flushed with schadenfreude, as we lapsed from drunken singing to morose headaches in the car’s relentless heat.

Back at the trullo, another group trip to nearby Alberobello was planned.

The home of trulli, this Unesco World Heritage site is like a curious tourist-filled hobbit land. From the doors of these mini 18th century limestone houses, their owners sell lace, leather handbags and miniature plaster versions of their already tiny houses.

Stopping on the way home to pick up groceries in the romantic white-washed historic centre of Locorotondo, I realised that, in truth, you don’t need to ‘visit’ southern Italy. Living, drinking, shopping and cooking in it for one week is fulfilling enough.