Bova Bakery is a traditional scratch artisan bakery located in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Since our founding over forty years ago by Antonio Biagio "Biage" Bova, and Lauren Beyer, Bova Bakery has made and sold tens of thousands of pizza crusts.

Although Biage has passed on, Lauren continues the traditions he bequeathed over his long, colorful and illustrious career as a scratch bread, roll, focaccia and pizza crust baker.

Biage began learning at his father's knee at an Italian North End Boston bakery where as a child in the 1920s and 30s he stoked and tended the wood-fired oven, long before the likes of computer-controlled natural gas ovens came into use.

Biage's long baking apprenticeship imbued in him an understanding of, and a near-reverence for, the nature of yeast-raised dough. Biage considered dough a beautiful living thing, deserving of honor and respect. He understood its almost karmic character. Biage was an artist, and on his palette were flour, water, yeast. Biage knew just how to adjust when limitless combinations of temperature, humidity, barometric pressure--even sudden breezes--conspired to injure his creation.

It takes a lifetime to really understand how dough behaves, how to "play" an oven, how to breath life into simple ingredients. 

About our crusts. Each one really is hand made. Although we try to make them perfectly round with identical diameters, frankly it's impossible without resorting to additives and dough conditioners and other mass production devices. All of our crusts are slightly different and as unique as snowflakes. They look so homemade folks might think you prepared them. That's okay, we won't tell.

Order with confidence. We stand behind our products. If you're not entirely pleased, we'll make it right.