I Just Found the Only Way I’ll Ever Make Tomato Toast Again
Tomato toast is a gift and a joy. Is there anything as easy or satisfying as toasted bread and tomatoes? I don’t think so. A hunk of bread topped with a juicy, sweet end-of-summer tomato is a near-perfect way to start the day, in my opinion. However, I’ve lately gotten to thinking about what the best way is to make this super-simple dish.
I typically take a “whatever’s around” approach and festoon my toast with a sprinkle of something spicy, experiment with different salts, and play with condiments. If I have other fresh produce or some cheese that needs finishing off, I’ll throw those on there as well (bring on the mozzarella and peaches!). In a quest to find “the best way to make tomato toast,” though, this all seemed like window dressing. In order to get to the heart of the matter I needed to focus on the most important part: the tomato. What’s the best way to treat the tomato so that, however you choose to dress it up, you’re building your toast on the most solid, flavorful foundation you can? I was determined to find out and tried seven different methods in my quest.
Let’s get this out of the way right now: None of these techniques yielded bad tomato toast. I made seven yummy toasts that I was happy to eat. This is about the best way to highlight the tomatoes. My hope is at the end of this journey I’ll have landed on the best treatment for whatever tomatoes you happen to have, which you can then customize to your liking. Add herbs, throw some chili crisp on there, mix a little mustard in with your mayo for a Dijonnaise situation — the world is your oyster. I’m not here to tell you how to do your toast. I’m here to tell you how to do your tomatoes. Onward.
A Few Notes on Methodology
There are about a million ways to make tomato toast, so in order to conduct a fair test, I had to create some parameters. I left aside additional toppings and seasonings and focused solely on a basic, classic version of tomato toast: sliced bread, tomato, mayonnaise (with the exception of one method), salt, and pepper.
Credit: Photo: Erik Bernstein; Food Styling: Rachel Perlmutter
Tomato Toast Method: Smashed Tomatoes
Rating: 3/10
About this method: This is the only method where I strayed from the beefsteak tomato. In order to get the proper “smash,” I used cherry tomatoes instead (bought on the same day at the same store as the other tomatoes I used for testing). I briefly blistered the tomatoes in a skillet, just to the point that the skins were starting to wrinkle and the tomatoes were beginning to split. I topped the toast with mayo, added the blistered tomatoes, then used a fork to lightly smash them into the bread, and finished with a sprinkle of salt and pepper.
Results: This toast is super flavorful. Heat enhances the natural sweetness and umami of the tomatoes and even very brief cooking transforms their texture into a soft, jam-like consistency. It was delicious and even felt lightly delicate.
All of that said, there are some distinct drawbacks. Cooking the tomatoes draws out their moisture, which, when coupled with smashing them onto the toast, results in a very moist toast. Even a thick slice of rustic sourdough with a protective layer of mayo could not stand up to all of that tomato juice. (Maybe a thick layer of goat cheese or ricotta would help here?)
It was also pretty messy to eat. Trying to pick it up was basically a no-go between the floppy bread and cherry tomatoes immediately rolling all over the place. This is a fork-and-knife affair. Ultimately, while this toast was one of the most flavorful in the lineup, it lost major points for the extra work required (cooking the tomatoes) and for delivering soggy bread.
Credit: Photo: Erik Bernstein; Food Styling: Rachel Perlmutter
Tomato Toast Method: Butter
Rating: 4/10
About this method: For this method I eschewed mayonnaise in favor of butter. I opted for my go-to supermarket butter upgrade: salted Kerrygold. After slathering my toast, I added 2 slices from a beefsteak tomato, and topped them with a pinch each of salt and pepper.
Results: This toast was good, but kind of one-note. It lacked the combination of creaminess and tang that mayonnaise provides. I think adding herbs or spice here might make this more of a competitor against the traditional mayo toast, but, alas, that is not part of this experiment.
Credit: Photo: Erik Bernstein; Food Styling: Rachel Perlmutter
Tomato Toast Method: Marinated Tomatoes
Rating: 5/10
About this method: This test involved adding tomato slices to a mixture of 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil, 1 teaspoon red wine vinegar, 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt, and a pinch of black pepper in a shallow bowl. I let the tomato slices marinate for 10 minutes before adding them to my mayo-ed toast. I did not add extra salt and pepper here, as it was already present in the marinade.
Results: This was the toast with the most going on flavor-wise. Marinating the tomatoes added tanginess from the vinegar and the grassy, vegetal qualities of olive oil. However, this method suffered from the same problem as the smashed tomato toast. The technique added flavor, but also moisture — even after letting the excess marinade drip off the tomato slices before adding them to the toast, I wound up with a slightly wet toast (not ideal).
Credit: Photo: Erik Bernstein; Food Styling: Rachel Perlmutter
Tomato Toast Method: Roasted Tomatoes
Rating: 6/10
About this method: For this method I preheated my oven to 400°F and arranged a few tomato slices on a rimmed baking sheet. I then drizzled the slices with about 1 tablespoon of extra-virgin olive oil, and sprinkled with kosher salt and ground black pepper. I roasted them until they were wrinkled and had begun to darken, about 15 minutes. While the tomatoes were roasting, I made the toast. I did not sprinkle the tomatoes with extra salt and pepper after roasting.
Results: Like the blistered tomatoes, roasting enhances the sweetness and overall tomatoey flavor of the tomatoes. This method gains points for simultaneously drying the tomatoes out a bit, leading to less of a juicy mess than the smashed tomato toast, but loses them again for effort. Tomato toast seems like a dish that should ideally be achieved with little fuss. Add heating up the oven to the process, and then waiting for the tomatoes to roast is … a lot. Even more so if you’re making your toast in the dog days of summer. That said, this is a great option if, say, it’s winter and you’re trying to make toast with hard, watery, out-of-season tomatoes. The roasting process will soften them and enhance their natural tomatoey flavor.
Credit: Photo: Erik Bernstein; Food Styling: Rachel Perlmutter
Tomato Toast Method: Plain Tomatoes
Rating: 7/10
About this method: This is the classic approach: Toasted bread, mayo, tomato slices left untreated in any way, and sprinkled with salt and pepper.
Results: This is the platonic ideal of tomato toast. It’s almost perfect as-is. What’s not to love? However, the Achilles’ heel of making tomato toast this way is that its overall success is entirely dependent on the quality of the few ingredients it’s composed of. There’s nowhere to hide. If you make baseline tomato toast, then every element better be the best it can be — or what you’ll wind up with will be pretty run-of-the-mill. This is not the treatment for out-of-season supermarket tomatoes.
Credit: Photo: Erik Bernstein; Food Styling: Rachel Perlmutter
Tomato Toast Method: Add Cheese
Rating: 8/10
About this method: I turned to the New York Times for this one, because Ali Slagle’s version of cheesy tomato toast doesn’t involve melting the cheese — instead, you mix grated cheddar in with the mayo. This addition seemed in keeping with the spirit of my testing, not going outside the bounds of a “basic” tomato toast any more than marinating the tomatoes did.
Results: This technique gets a slight edge over the “plain tomatoes” classic treatment because the addition of cheddar gives less-than-perfect tomatoes somewhere to hide, without adding any significant extra work to the whole process (like roasting does, for example). This is a great option if you want your toast a bit more complex, without completely turning it into something else. The cheese is a nice addition without overwhelming the tomato, or any other toast element. I used extra-sharp cheddar for this test, and the flavor wasn’t overpowering. It gave the mayo a deeper depth of flavor and a nice extra tang.
Credit: Photo: Erik Bernstein; Food Styling: Rachel Perlmutter
Tomato Toast Method: Pre-Salted Tomatoes
Rating: 10/10
About this method: For this test, I laid the tomato slices on a paper towel-lined plate and sprinkled them with 1/4 teaspoon of kosher salt. I then let them sit for 10 minutes while I prepared the toast before adding them on top and sprinkling with black pepper.
Results: This technique was the clear winner. It gets the best out of the tomatoes without fundamentally altering the spirit of classic tomato toast. It can improve both off- and in-season tomatoes and doesn’t involve any significant extra steps or cooking. The salt draws moisture out of the tomato slices, simultaneously seasoning them and ensuring you don’t wind up with soggy toast.
I actually did this test twice — once with the tomato slices on paper towels and once in a colander, so I could measure the amount of liquid the salt pulled out, which turned out to be about 1/2 teaspoon. While 1/2 teaspoon might not seem like a lot of liquid, when you’re talking about the surface area of a slice of bread, it’s quite a lot. This is a great technique for both drawing extra moisture out of overly juicy tomatoes and improving not-so-great ones.
