Prosciutto Bruschetta

This prosciutto bruschetta has an amazing salty, flavorful taste that everybody loves.  Prosciutto is a famous Italian food that combines amazingly with tomato, onion and basil.

Ingredients

The ingredients for prosciutto bruschetta start out with lots of garlic, tomatoes, onion and basil. Then we add in the amazing flavor of prosciutto and some beautiful melted mozzarella.

Bread – 1 loaf of bread.  Bruschetta is typically made with baguette, but I have not been using that lately.  I find the baguette pieces smaller than I would like.  So instead I’ve been using a nice loaf that can be sliced in various ways. 

You want slices that are about half an inch to a third of an inch (1 cm) thick. We want the bread thin enough that it will go crunchy in the oven, but thick enough to absorb the olive oil and delicious juice from the tomatoes and onion. 

If the slice is too long, you can always cut it in half to make two bruschetta pieces out of the one slice of bread.  

Garlic – 3 cloves of garlic. Lots and lots of beautiful fresh garlic! About 4 cloves for this recipe. Chop it up coarsely with a knife, or use a garlic press. Garlic and olive oil are a match made in heaven, don’t be shy when adding the garlic, I certainly have not – see picture below.  

Olive oil – About ⅓ of a cup. You want to use the best quality olive oil that you have available, there is a difference. 

Prosciutto – About 8 to 10 slices of prosciutto will be enough, I often cut them in half if they are too long. You can usually buy it from your local deli section.  

Mozzarella cheese – About 8 oz (250 grams) of mozzarella will be plenty.  Shredded is good but not necessary.  I do find it hard to slice mozzarella, but pre-shredded cheeses have extra stabilizers and chemicals that I don’t like, so best to buy it whole and shred it yourself.  Or simply slice it like I did in these pictures.

Basil – 4 or 5 fresh basil leaves.  I bought a small basil plant for about the price as a few sprigs of fresh basil. So now I have a little basil plant sitting on my kitchen counter for whenever I need a few basil leaves! 

Tomato –  2 medium sized tomatoes, washed and chopped up finely.  

Onion  – Half a large onion.  Red onion has great flavor and is best here, white onion will also be fine.  Just don’t skip the onion, it adds a great bite-y taste to the bruschetta that we really want.

Directions

Turn on your oven so it can preheat to 400 F (200 C) while we are doing other things. 

We need to chop up the garlic, tomato, onion and basil leaves.  

Next chop up the tomato, onion and basil leaves and place them all in a separate small bowl. You can chop the tomato fairly roughly as in the photo below.  Set aside, we will spoon this goodness onto the bread in a couple of steps.

Now dice the garlic (or use a garlic press), put it into a small bowl, and cover with olive oil as in the picture below.

Now spoon generous lashings of the oil and garlic mix (see picture below) onto the bread and place the bread into a high rack in the oven.

Leave the bread in the oven for about 10 minutes – but keep an eye on it!  We want the garlic to go a nice brown color, similar to when you cook it in a pan with oil, but we do not want the bread to burn.  

Use the time while the bread is in the oven to slice (or grate) the mozzarella cheese as in the picture above.  

When the bread looks like the picture below, take it out of the oven.  The garlic will have cooked, and your kitchen will smell amazingly of garlic and olive oil.

Place the mozzarella on top of the bread, and put it back in the oven for another 5 minutes, until the mozzarella melts, but before it burns!  Keep a close eye on it again, times will vary depending on your oven.  

Now take the bread out of the oven and place the prosciutto on top of the melted mozzarella as in the picture below.  Cut your pieces of prosciutto as required so they do not overhang the bread.  

Place generous spoonfuls of the tomato, onion, basil mixture on top of the bread which now has melted mozzarella and prosciutto.  The final product will look like the picture below.  

Serve to your amazed, hungry eaters!  Add another appetizer like san choy bow to turn this into a great meal.

Questions (FAQ)