As the weather turns to fall and temperatures begin to drop, I find myself back in the world of baking breads. While I am very fond of making sourdough bread at home, any rustic country-style loaf will work for this easy recipe. Toasted crostini are rubbed with garlic and topped with a mixture of salted tomatoes, sweet onion, capers, mozzarella cheese, and a balsamic glaze.
The following recipe makes about 20 crostini, although you can scale this recipe up or down depending on how many guests you are trying to feed.
Tomato Basil Bruschetta Bites with Mozzarella & Balsamic
As the weather turns to fall and temperatures begin to drop, I find myself back in the world of baking breads. While I am very fond of making sourdough bread at home, any rustic country-style loaf will work for this easy recipe. Toasted crostini are rubbed with garlic and topped with a mixture of salted tomatoes, sweet onion, capers, mozzarella cheese, and a balsamic glaze.The following recipe makes about 20 crostini, although you can scale this recipe up or down depending on how many guests you are trying to feed.
Ingredients
- 4 ripe tomatoes (stems removed, flesh cut large dice)
- 1 tsp Kosher salt
- ½ sweet onion (cut into thin slices)
- 2 Tbsp capers (finely minced)
- 1 cup mini mozzarella balls (cut into quarters)
- ¼ tsp freshly-ground black pepper
- 8 fresh basil leaves (finely sliced)
- 2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 4 cloves garlic (left whole and unpeeled)
- 1 loaf of rustic country-style sourdough bread (slices cut into long bite-sized rectangles)
- 4 Tbsp salted butter (softened)
- 2 Tbsp balsamic glaze
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 400F.
- Remove the stems from the ripe tomatoes, and cut the remaining tomato flesh into large dice cubes measuring roughly ½” x ½” x ½”.
- Salt the chopped tomatoes with Kosher salt, and place them in a bowl to drain their excess water for fifteen minutes.
- When the tomatoes have sat for fifteen minutes, drain the excess tomato water from the bowl.
- Mix the tomatoes with the thinly-sliced sweet onion, minced capers, and quartered mini mozzarella balls.
- Add some freshly-ground black pepper, some finely-sliced basil leaves, and some Extra Virgin olive oil.
- Allow your tomato mixture to sit out while you heat the garlic cloves and get your bread ready.
- For the garlic, add the unpeeled whole cloves of garlic to a sauté pan and warm them up in the pan with no added fat over medium heat.
- Turn the garlic cloves after a few minutes, and continue to cook them gently in their skins until the garlic cloves insides are soft, about six minutes total.
- Remove the garlic from the pan, and remove the skins from the cloves.
- *Garlic cloves are much easier to peel if you warm them up first using this dry pan roasting method inspired by Mexican techniques.
- Set the peeled softened garlic cloves aside for rubbing on the bread later.
- Cut the country-style loaf of bread into long rectangles.
- Spread the softened salted butter on one side of the crostini.
- Bake the crostini in the oven for roughly 5 minutes, just long enough to toast the exterior of the pieces of bread a bit.
- Drain the excess liquid from your tomato topping that you made earlier.
- Remove the crostini from the oven and rub the softened garlic cloves over the surface of the toasted bread slices.
- *You don’t need to use all of the garlic, it is mostly to give more flavor to the bread before you add the tomatoes.
- Add some of the tomato mixture on top of the toasted crostini that has been rubbed with garlic.
- Drizzle on some balsamic glaze over the top of the crostini, and serve immediately.
Notes
These are best eaten right away, while the bread is still warm. Although any extra tomato topping can be eaten as a small side salad.
One thing that I love about recipes like this is that the topping can be made in advance and stored in the fridge prior to assembly. Just make sure to drain the excess liquid from the tomatoes before adding to the toasted bread. I also like to let the mixture come back to room temperature before adding to the warm crostini.
You can buy balsamic glaze at the supermarket, or make a balsamic reduction yourself at home by slowly cooking down balsamic vinegar until it thickens in consistency.