I've heard that people tend to get a bit annoyed when they go to Italy and find out that the overwhelming Italian concept of bruschetta is nothing more than... garlic bread. Yep, garlic bread. Take a slice of basic Italian bread, toast it, rub with raw garlic, and top with olive oil. That, if you talk to an Italian, is probably the reaction you'll get when asked to describe bruschetta.
In the US, however, bruschetta has become something else. A bruschetta plate in this country is made with toasted Italian bread and piled high with tomatoes, basil, garlic, cheese, and any number of other interesting foodstuffs; Carlo Middione, in The Food of Southern Italy refers to this as bruschetta alla Romana. I don't know if this is typically Roman, but it seems to be the archetype of what we in this country consider bruschetta.
So... what are we dealing with here? I'm not really going to give a proper recipe, but try this, next time you need something quick and easy for dinner:
Take some really good Italian peasant bread. Cut it thick and toast it, preferably over an open fire if you can manage it. Rub the slices down with raw garlic and some good olive oil; arrange on a plate and top with some diced or sliced, very fresh, very ripe tomatoes, fresh basil, and a little shredded Parmigiano-Reggiano. You can also add some fresh, lightly salted Mozzarella (bufala if you can get it); if you have access to a broiler, arranging the whole thing on a broilerproof serving dish and heating it up just a bit (enough to melt the cheese without causing the toast to become soggy under the tomatoes) is a nice touch as well.
Don't overdo bruschetta, and don't use anything but fresh ingredients.
This elegant little bit of snack food is something I learned about from Colman Andrews' Catalan Cuisine, which was my favorite ethnic cookbook for many years until I got Claudia Roden's Book of Jewish Food; it still, to my mind, sets a standard for how to write about an ethnic cuisine.
Hailing from Catalunya, the northeast corner of Spain, this dish (its name means "bread with tomato" in Catalan) is a simple appetizer with considerable popularity. It is made very much like proper Italian bruschetta, but instead of garlic, vine-ripened tomatoes are used.
Take some crusty French or Italian-style bread, slice, and toast lightly as above. Cut tomato and rub both sides of the bread with the tomato; drizzle with olive oil (preferably Spanish extra virgin) and a little bit of salt. Anchovies are sometimes added as well.