Making Bruschetta
There is only 1 answer to the question of how you can make bruschetta and that is to make it as it has been made traditionally in Tuscany for two thousand years. Take a slice of the dry salt-free Tuscan bread, rub it vigourously with garlic and fry it in olive oil. Whilst it is still frying, cover it with finely chopped tomato. As straightforward as that! That is the best way to make bruschetta. If you would like a demonstration, watch Julie doing it in “Julie and Julia”.
The Tuscan bread is salt free because salt in the bread keeps it moist and there is really a danger of it turning mouldy. The result is really a rather bland bread that dries out quickly. Much, therefore, of Tuscan cooking concentrates on utilizing the bread in a variety of recipes and making it a lot more interesting. Bruschetta is really a fine example of this. It can be a peasant food, simply prepared and using ingredients that any Tuscan will need to hand.
This is really a every day food, unlike the fetta unta, the slice of hard, slightly toasted bread anointed with the 1st olive oil of the 1st pressing of the harvest. It is a great honour to be present at a meal with a Tuscan family where fetta unta is served. This isn’t at all the best way to make bruschetta, although you will discover some foreigners who confuse the two.
Bruschetta, however, has expanded beyond its original meaning. Every tiny restaurant owner in Italy now believes that he knows how you can make bruschetta and it is provided every day on the menu. The peasant dish, however, has taken on a new elegance. Although the basis in Italy remains a slice of bread, rubbed with garlic and fried in olive oil, there have been several variations on the theme of chopped tomato. Basil is added, chopped green peppers are added, olives are added. All are delicious and still in keeping with the tradition.
Outside Italy the bruschetta has been adopted as a global food, a lot as pizza took over the entire world a couple of decades back. You come across coffe houses in London, milk bars in New Jersey, bistros in Paris, street stalls in Malta, tearooms on the Island of Skye, which all claim to know how to make bruschetta. Some of them do know exactly how to make bruschetta. The bread is saturated in olive oil, it has clearly been well-rubbed with garlic, and even an elderly Tuscan farmer would recognise the display of vegetables sizzling on top, artichoke hearts, mushrooms, rocket, asparagus. He could be surprised at the addition of chorizo or parma ham but not necessarily shocked.
Other so-called bruschettas don’t pass the test. A slice of white bread, toasted, with a couple of vegetables and a drizzle of olive oil, just isn’t a bruschetta. It is a slicce of white bread toasted…. Even less so is a slice of bread toasted with cheese on top. That isn’t how to make bruschetta; which is how you can make toasted cheese. And, most certainly, the bread with numerous fruits on top that one sometimes sees described as bruschetta – no, no, strawberries do not go with garlic and without garlic, it is not a bruschetta. Do whatever you like, within reason, but if you need to know how you can make bruschetta, begin with a slice of bread, rub it with garlic, fry it in olve oil, spread on chopped tomatoes as it is frying – that’s the only way to make bruschetta.
There is lots of information online about bruschetta including new papers by Troy Hayles on how to make bruschetta.
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