For bruschetta, all you need are tomatoes, olive oil, salt, garlic, and French bread. French bread is made with no added fat, and so I think that makes it crispy when toasted. I think that's important when making bruschetta. Actually, I don't have any clue what makes some breads crispy when toasted. Staleness? Lack of preservatives? Who cares? The point is that crispy is good, and crispy is what you want. It's worth getting good tomatoes if you can, but if your only choice are those pretend tomatoes from the grocer, then you can still get by. Good garlic seems easy to find. Most olive oil comes in a fancy package, but they're not all the same. I suppose you get what you pay for there. That's it for ingredients, but we've also added mozzarella, balsamic vinegar, and I've heard prosciutto is good too.
One thing worth saying more about is the garlic. There are reasons why I like to eat a lot of fresh garlic, but it is very hard for me to do. It's easier for me to drink straight whiskey than to eat raw garlic. But bruschetta is made delicious by abundant and raw garlic. If the bread is sufficiently crispy, the first step would typically be to cut a clove of garlic in half, and then scrape half of it evenly on the bread. Then follow with olive oil and other ingredients. This is how I learned to make it in Italy. Eventually, I found this to not be the best way to add garlic to bread. Now, I make use of a garlic press, where I press the garlic and spread it across the bread. This way I can easily consume 2 to 4 cloves of fresh garlic in one meal of bruschetta. It would be objectionable for me to eat that much fresh garlic by itself, in a brief period of time. But, it is what makes bruschetta delicious.
