Short's Brewery Rolls in the Dough

July 29, 2016

Pizza is everywhere in northern Michigan and across America. So it’s a challenge for any restaurant, pub, or pizza place to make their pie standout. Popular local microbrew destination Short’s Brewing Company found a way, and all it took was looking in their own proverbial backyard.

PIZZA PHILOSOPHY

Luke Meredith, head chef at Short’s pub in Bellaire, has been working with the brewery’s menu for about two years. Together with his kitchen team, he has been working on an idea to upgrade the brewpub’s pizza dough — to make it different and closer to Short’s business and food philosophies.

“We knew we wanted to have a beerforward pizza dough,” Meredith said. “So we tested all types of dough, trying different flours and liquids.” The pivotal ingredient was, of course, Short’s own beer. But a number of additional components needed to fall into place to truly make the dough a standout.

IMPORTANT INGREDIENTS

Fortunately, Short’s already had a line on a reliable source for ingredients: Briess Malt and Ingredients Co. out of Detroit. “We buy all of our malt and grains from Briess to brew our beer,” Meredith said. “And we found that they also have a line of baking products, most of which are byproducts of beer.” Short’s snagged three: malt syrup to use instead of sugar, caramel-malted wheat flour, and an ingredient familiar to bread bakers, diastatic malt powder. “It helps speed up the dough and adds good texture,” Meredith said. “It also promotes good bubbling in the dough, like what you’d expect from any really good pizza place.”

FOCUSED FLAVORS

With the unique ingredients in hand, Meredith and the Short’s kitchen team began experimenting with different flavors of beer and malt syrup until they achieved the flavor they and the executive team liked. Once they hit on the right flavor combination, they tackled texture.

One member of Short’s team, Sam De- Camp, brought up his friend Arlo Brandl, a consulting baker from Ann Arbor, who helped Meredith and his co-workers test dough styles — everything from Chicagostyle pizza dough to New York, Chicago, and Neopolitan. “We finally settled on the Sicilian-style dough,” Meredith said. “We really like the texture of it, and with our Short’s Local Lager as a key ingredient, it became the winner.”

Once the new pizza dough got the green light, Short’s launched its new pizzas this past February.

CRISPY CHEW

The new dough has several characteristics that make it unique. “We ferment the dough a minimum of 24 hours,” Meredith said. “This, and the ingredients, plus our beer, make the dough dark and rich. It looks like whole wheat, has a lot of depth and malt, and is crispy outside with a nice chew to it.”

Six featured pizzas are now on the Short’s menu, with a secondary option to build your own pie. The best-selling pizzas in the pub: the Feed the Fire pizza, which is topped with braised shredded chicken, bacon sriracha, smoked gouda, and scallions; and the Mushroom Festival, topped with shiitake, crimini, and oyster mushrooms, plus white cheddar, chiles, oregano, and pesto. “The point was to make dough for our own pizza, in our own pub,” Meredith said. “It was such a cool process, if a lengthy one. But our goal was to make the best-tasting pizza dough possible, and our beer is a big part of that.”

Short’s Brewery and Pub is located at 121 North Bridge St. in Bellaire. Learn more at shortsbrewing.com or 231-498-2300.