Monday, March 23, 2009

Homemade Bertucci's Silano Pizza!

One of my favorite pizzas in the whole world is the Silano from Bertucci's, so I decided to try to make it at home the other day. For those who aren't familiar with it, the pizza is a white pizza - it doesn't have tomato sauce and instead is broccoli and chicken and mozzarella cheese in a lemon-cream white sauce.

I cheated and bought a refrigerated pizza crust, but other than that I made it from scratch. Here's what I used...
1 refrigerated pizza crust
1 medium head of broccoli, chopped and steamed until not quite tender.
8 oz of fresh mozzarella cheese, cut into 1/2 inch slices
1/3 lb of chicken, cooked and chopped
1/2 cup of ricotta cheese
1 cup whipping cream
1/3 cup lemon juice
pepper
several tablespoonfuls of grated parmesan

I spread the pizza dough on the greased cookie sheet as directed, and then mixed together the whipping cream, lemon juice, pepper and parmesan cheese to make the white sauce. I spread half the white sauce on the pizza and then added the broccoli, chicken, mozzarella and ricotta (which I dropped in tablespoonfuls on the pizza) and then poured the rest of the white sauce over the top of the pizza. I then baked it according to the directions on the package, until the crust was golden brown. I think it took about 15 minutes at 400 degrees.

Here's my Silano pizza! It came out really well and tasted surprisingly like the Bertuccis version, minus the brick-oven crust of course, but that's hard to do at home.
The next time I make the recipe I'll make a few changes - first, I won't use any ricotta. I mostly used it because I had it on hand and I wanted to get rid of it (Bertuccis version doesn't have ricotta, I don't believe). It didn't really add anything to the pizza, anyway. Second, I wouldn't make as much white sauce and I definitely wouldn't use as much lemon juice (the lemon flavor was a little, um, overpowering). I would probably use 1/2 cup - 2/3 cup cream and only a couple tablespoonfuls of lemon juice. Other than that I thought it came out pretty well. And definitely use fresh mozzarella instead of the shredded stuff...it tastes soooo much better!

Revised ingredient list:
1 refrigerated pizza crust
1 medium head of broccoli, chopped and steamed until not quite tender.
8 oz of fresh mozzarella cheese, cut into 1/2 inch slices
1/3 - 1/2 lb of chicken, cooked and chopped
1/2 - 2/3 cup whipping cream
several tablespoonfuls of lemon juice
dash of pepper
several tablespoonfuls of grated parmesean

4 comments:

  1. mmm that look fabulous! did you have to be careful about curdling the cream when you put the lemon juice in?

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  2. hmmm it didn't seem to curdle?? I think maybe heavy cream curdles less easily than creams with lower fat content? I'm not sure..anyway it tasted fine...

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  3. Hi! Thought I should tell you that i found your blog while searching for Silano Pizza recipe. Thanks so much, we followed your recipe and your follow-up recommendations and it turned out a.m.a.z.i.n.g- so a huge thanks to you!!!

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  4. Try Silano cheese. It will be even closer in taste.

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