When Muirfield Village Golf Club (MVGC), a seasonal, 300-member club in Dublin, Ohio, remodeled its clubhouse in 2013, the team added a small gas pizza oven, which fits roughly five pizzas at a time. Despite space limitations, Executive Sous Chef Nathan Hall and the culinary team have made the most of the opportunity, steadily refining the club’s pizza program, testing new processes and ingredients, one housemade element at a time.
Today, MVGC’s pizza style is Neapolitan meets New York, Hall says—personal-style, about 12-14 inches—thin but perfectly chewy, with minimal, high-quality toppings. The club’s sole pastry chef, Kayla Holbrooks, makes pizza dough fresh every other day, in addition to daily focaccia and other bread for service.
“Our pizza dough has a two-day shelf life,” notes Holbrooks. “But I also utilize it for other products because I do service bread every single day. I’ve made pizza loaves, which members and staff love. I’ve made parmesan pull-apart bread and personal focaccias.”
While pizza is specifically offered in one dining venue, MVGC’S members are welcome to order it whenever—and wherever—they’d like.
“We’ll have members who want eight to 10 pizzas, all at once, to go,” Hall says. “If you’re on the property, and you want a pizza, we’re going to give it to you. We have a big ‘not saying no’ motto here.”
Club + Resort Chef (C+RC): Tell us about the process for testing and improving pizza at MVGC.
Nathan Hall (NH): We don’t have a ton of members, so it’s not like we’re cranking out pizza like Papa John’s, but that’s given us the ability to really develop the [program]. Every year, we’ve thought about how we can increase the overall quality of our pizza program.
When we first started in 2013, we bought the pizza dough. Eventually, we decided to develop our own dough recipe. Over the years, we’ve gone through various iterations of the recipe and the processes of folding and fermenting and how long it holds. Today, [Holbrooks] makes our pizza dough every other day.
We also went through different styles of cheeses and various ingredients. We were buying a frozen sausage crumble product when we first started. Now we make and crumble all of our own sausage in-house.
Later, we started looking into making pizza sauce in-house, [rather than] buying a canned product.
We’ve started following food trends as well, like breakfast pizzas and hot honey pizzas.
C+RC: How many pizzas do you typically sell per week?
NH: We’re selling, on average, 100 pizzas a week throughout our busy season, which is not something we ever thought we would have done, especially with such a small oven.
C+RC: What have you found makes for good housemade pizza sauce?
NH: For the most part, it’s all about the tomato products you use. We’ve been using Stanislaus, specifically Alta Cucina, for over a decade because they’re consistent in the sweetness and in the consistency of the tomato product. We try to keep it simple—season a little bit but let the tomato speak for itself.
C+RC: What are the most popular toppings on your pizzas?
NH: The two we sell the most of are Italian Meat Lovers (which features spicy capicola, Italian sausage, pepperoni, onions, and banana peppers) and Hot Honey Pepperoni (fresh mozzarella, chili flake, garden oregano, and a housemade hot honey). But members can also choose from any of our toppings to build their own pizza.
We also offer a brunch pizza in the morning—ricotta and house Canadian bacon, crack an egg on it.
We keep an extensive garden here at MVGC as well, so we dry all of our own oregano and crush that on top of our pizzas prior to service.
C+RC: Have you always done personal pizzas? Have you tried other sizes?
NH: We started smaller and slowly expanded. We had a great personal woodworker who made all of our pizza boards for us, so we try to fit it to that board, which is about 12 to 14 inches.
Our pizzas are eight small slices, or six medium slices. It’s not necessarily comparable [in size] to a pizza you’d get at a typical [pizza] shop, but that’s what gives us the ability to put so much time and effort into it—because it’s so individualized to our membership.
C+RC: You’ve been able to raise the price while keeping costs low. Can you talk about that pricing structure and how it has evolved?
NH: The more we sold, the more time and effort we could put into [the process], and we slowly increased the price over time, [alongside] the quality of what we’re able to offer. Our pizza starts at $16 and can go as high as $21, depending on toppings.
Making your own dough is cheaper than buying dough. And having a pastry team—in our case, having [Holbrooks]—makes it more doable.
We use a specific mix of [different flours], but at the end of the day, it’s flour, water, a little bit of oil, and yeast—and that’s not that expensive.
From there, we’re not buying premade sauce; we’re buying a specific tomato, which might cost a little bit more, but we’re conscious about the amount of ingredients that go on a pizza.
We’re in the Midwest, we’re in Ohio, which I think is the capital of over-complicating pizza. But we rein it in and make sure it’s cost-effective as well as satisfying.
And we’re making our own sausage, which is less expensive than buying premade. You have to factor in labor, but [for us], it’s inexpensive and a little bit more fun.
We have put more money into sourcing [certain products], especially cured meats. But it’s not that expensive at the end of the day.
C+RC: What final piece of advice would you give a chef who’s wanting to create a pizza program? What do you wish you knew when you started?
NH: The bigger oven, the better—a big oven, consistent tomato product, and making your own dough.
If you’re able to sell a lot of pizza, it might be a good way for you to implement a pastry program if you don’t have one, strictly because you need someone to work dough on a consistent basis.
This will be cheaper in the long run, and you will be able to provide new, high-quality, housemade products for
your members.
