Very little needs to be said nor proof provided to demonstrate the profound love of olives and their oils than the presence of bruschetta in the Mediterranean diet. I’m not speaking here of the soggy mess that passes for bruschetta here in Canada. Rather, I’m thinking of this dish in its purest form, as nothing more than a coarse textured slice of peasant bread toasted over burning embers, rubbed with raw garlic, and dipped into the first fragrant pressings of the olive crop.

We know this presentation, by its very distant cousin, garlic bread which is made by mashing a bit of garlic, sometimes with fresh oregano or basil into butter which is then spread on bread slices and reassembled into a loaf and heated in the oven. As good as this can be, it has already moved a great distance from the original. While garlic bread is served here as an appetizer, bruschetta is almost a meal in itself, eaten as a midday snack or a country-style breakfast.

Because of this, the logic of its making is different, starting with the need for that slightly stale, coarse textured bread. This isn’t any misplaced empathy for its peasant origins but the required need for a crisp contrast against the oils sweet lubricity. Dip a soft crumbed slice of bread into oil and the result is nothing more than greasy mush. Slicing the loaf thickly sharpens the contrast between the oil and bread further and toasting it until just speckled with brown. This is traditionally done over open coals, giving the bread a wonderful smoky flavour although a barbecue or broiler works nicely.

The toasting having crisped and dried the bread and brought out its flavour is then rubbed with raw garlic and brushed and dribbled with oil carrying the taste of the fruit. This is certainly an occasion to use your finest olive oil. When you eat, you encounter a full-flavoured and succulent flavour that is no more greasy than well-buttered toast. This balance between taste and texture can be fine-tuned to personal taste. Some eaters preferring to fry the bread in hot oil; other crush the garlic cloves directly into the oil to intensify the flavour. In Provence, they serve a version known as roustido dou moulin, where the bread slice is dunked in oil, topped with crushed garlic and anchovies, and then oven baked until crusty. In Spain, there is a version where the bread is toasted and both sides rubbed with garlic and fresh tomato pulp before being dribbled with olive oil. In Seville, I had another version where the bread was topped with garlic and hot red peppers ground together and seasoned with salt and pepper and then wetted with the juice of half an orange.

No matter how you eat it, bread and oil isn’t to be eaten by the plateful like hot buttered toast. It’s the garlic that adds both substance and pungency and in the end, slows the tongue. It is at this point that one begins to make sense of a meal of bread and olives, that fruit having both the richness and vibrancy that balance requires. Once you are acclimatized you will no longer think of olives as culinary simpletons –bits of seasoning, really, not much different than a garlic clove.  

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