Making Bruschetta
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There is only one answer to the question of how you can make bruschetta and that would be 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. Although it’s still frying, cover it with finely chopped tomato. As basic as that! That is how to make bruschetta. If you would like a demonstration, watch Julie doing it in “Julie and Julia”.
The Tuscan bread is salt totally free because salt within the bread keeps it moist and there can be 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 using the bread in numerous recipes and making it additional interesting. Bruschetta is a fine example of this. It is a peasant food, effortlessly prepared and utilizing ingredients that any Tuscan will have to hand.
This is really a daily food, unlike the fetta unta, the slice of hard, slightly toasted bread anointed with the very first olive oil of the very first 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 how to make bruschetta, even though you will find 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 to 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 a number of 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 several 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 precisely 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 may be surprised at the addition of chorizo or parma ham but not necessarily shocked.
Other so-called bruschettas do not pass the test. A slice of white bread, toasted, with several vegetables and a drizzle of olive oil, is not a bruschetta. It is a slicce of white bread toasted…. Even much less so is a slice of bread toasted with cheese on top. That isn’t how to make bruschetta; that is how you can make toasted cheese. And, most certainly, the bread with several fruits on top that 1 occasionally sees described as bruschetta - no, no, strawberries don’t go with garlic and without garlic, it is not a bruschetta. Do whatever you like, within reason, but when you wish to know how to make bruschetta, begin with a slice of bread, rub it with garlic, fry it in olve oil, spread on chopped tomatoes as it really 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.

