Sourdough Tomato & Basil Bruschetta - 5 stars

this is actually from valentine's day as well! this was my contribution as an afternoon snack to the food for the day. :-)

normally, i take a loaf of french bread and slice it crosswise into 1/2-3/4" thick slices for bruschetta. i saw a picture of a bruschetta that took a loaf of sourdough and cut it lengthwise (as i did in the picture above). it looked so tasty that i decided to try it out. and it was very good! the huge hunks of bread did make it much more difficult to eat, so if you're making bruschetta for a crowd, it's better to slice it crosswise into 1/2" thick slices.

however, if i made this for tony and myself again, i'd still slice it lengthwise as i did for the picture here. just brush a bit of olive oil on it, rub it with a garlic clove, and sprinkle sea salt on the cut side of the bread. i toasted it in the oven this time, but next time, i'd throw it on the grill face down for a few minutes instead. yum!

for the topping, i used approximately 8 roma tomatoes. i sliced the tops off the tomatoes and cut them in half lengthwise. i scooped out the flesh, and then chopped them into 3/8" hunks. i then diced half of a sweet white onion and who knows how many garlic cloves. probably 5 or 6. :-) for the basil, i picked all the leaves off the stems and stacked them in a couple piles. i had ~15 basil leaves. once they were stacked in piles, i rolled them up like a sleeping bag, and thin sliced the rolls, cutting parallel to the center stem of the basil leaf. that's how to get the pretty slivers of basil throughout the bruschetta topping.

i combined the tomatoes, diced onion, garlic and basil in a large bowl. i drizzled a healthy amount (healthy being a good few tablespoons, not healthy as in a very small amount) of olive oil over the mixture, and then added fresh ground sea salt and black pepper. i piled the mixture on top of the toasted bread, and voila! a fantastic afternoon snack.