Tomato bruschetta: bread rubbed with garlic while hot, tomatoes drained first
Real bruschetta is not a sandwich with tomato spread but a thick slice of good bread toasted until crisp, rubbed with raw garlic while it still burns your fingers, drizzled with olive oil and piled with tomatoes that salt has already drawn the water out of. Two steps decide everything: draining the tomatoes and rubbing the garlic on a hot crust. Without them you have wet bread.
Your own work in that: 13 min.
- Tomatoes draining 15 min
- Toasting 8 min
- Assembling 5 min
Step by step
0 / 5 doneDice the tomatoes and cut out the watery cores
Halve the tomatoes and scrape out the jelly-like seed cores with a teaspoon. Cut the flesh into 1 cm dice. The flesh alone holds its shape on the bread; the jelly is very watery and will quickly soak the toast.
Ingredients: 400 g tomatoes · ½ tsp salt · 2 tbsp olive oil · ½ bunch fresh basil · ¼ tsp black pepper
Centimetre dice, seed cores discardedSalt and drain
Toss the dice with half a teaspoon of salt and tip into a sieve set over a bowl. Leave 15 minutes. A few tablespoons of juice will collect underneath.
TipSalt draws water out of the tomato cells by osmosis and concentrates the flavour at the same time. Undrained tomatoes look identical on the plate, but two minutes later the bread beneath them is a sponge. Don't pour the juice away: drink it or add it to a pasta sauce.
A quarter hour in the sieve, juice in the bowlToast the bread
Toast the slices on a hot griddle pan, on a barbecue or under the oven grill set to maximum, 2–3 minutes a side, until the surface is hard and marked with dark stripes while the centre stays soft. The bread must be dry and rough on top.
Ingredients: 4 pcs rustic sourdough bread · 2 cloves garlic · 2 tbsp olive oil · 1 pinch flaky salt
Dark grill stripes, a soft centreRub with garlic while it burns
Halve a garlic clove lengthways and immediately, on the hot slice, rub the cut face across the rough surface. The crust works like a grater and leaves behind a thin film of garlic juice. Drizzle with olive oil.
TipThis is the only moment the trick works. On cooled toast the garlic grates far less well, so it is tempting to chop it — and chopped garlic gives a completely different, harsher flavour. One clove covers two slices; more will bury the tomatoes.
A cut clove over the hot, rough crustTop and serve
Toss the drained tomatoes with the 2 tablespoons of olive oil, torn basil and pepper. Spoon onto the toasts with a slotted spoon, so no leftover juice comes with them. Sprinkle with flaky salt and serve at once: bruschetta lives for five minutes.
Slotted spoon, basil, flaky salt
Before you start
With mozzarella or burrata
A ball of mozzarella torn into pieces under the tomatoes. Put the cheese on the toast before the tomatoes, never under the garlic.
In winter
Out of season tomatoes have no flavour. Make the roasted pepper version instead, or the bean one: crush white beans with a fork, olive oil, garlic and rosemary, and pile onto the garlic toast.
The bread matters
You need bread with a coarse, open structure: country loaf, sourdough, ciabatta. Sandwich bread goes soggy and its smooth surface won't grate the garlic.
