My Pizza Journey began in the 1950's when my mother started making "homemade pizza" using Chef Boyardee Cheese Pizza in a box kit with cans of parmesan cheese and pizza sauce and a packet of pizza flour. She also added cooked hamburger to make it a meat pizza, and I loved it! In fact, our whole family (including my father, mother, and older brother) liked it so much we sought out a real pizza pan at a local hardware store in Wichita Falls, Texas. In college in the early 1960's in Austin, Texas, I remember making pizza using canned biscuit dough for my pizza crust. After relocating to Houston post-college in 1964, I discovered Shakey's, which I enjoyed almost on a weekly basis.
My next recollection of homemade pizza making is in the 1980's trying various things for an easy pizza crust and finally taking a pizza class in 1985. The teacher was a bread baker and had the secret of a good crust - a yeast dough. From there it was off to the races with my homemade pizza. I invested in a Bosch kitchen machine (like the one used in the pizza class) capable of kneading the dough and pizza hardware (stone, peel, cutter, screens, pans, docker, etc.) from local cooking and restaurant supply stores. I started buying pizza cookbooks and eventually accumulated over 100, but finally cut back my collection due to limited shelf space! I made my homemade pizza for appreciative small and large groups, all the while experimenting with yeast crust recipes. I wrote a small (5-1/2"x8-1/2") pamphlet, Gourmet Pizza Secrets & Recipes, with contents of History of Pizza, Pizza Secrets, and Recipes in 1986 and updated a couple of times (latest was Third Edition in 1990) to provide a handout for pizza demonstrations by the author.
When traveling, I always survey and try out local pizzerias. My favorite "pizza trips" have been to New York City's John's of Bleeker Street (1992), Chicago's Pizzeria Uno (1998), and Phoenix's Pizzeria Bianco (1999). Locally and nationally known in the Denver-Boulder area, we have Boulder's Pizzeria Locale and Pizzeria Basta, and Denver's Marco's Coal Fired Pizza and Blue Pan Pizza.
In about 2002, I started my website Homemade Gourmet Pizza as a way of combining my two hobbies - pizza making and website design. Pizza Blog documents all of my pizza ventures, both homemade and eat-out. In 2007, there was a definite shift away from homemade due to increasing number of pizzerias available to try in the Denver-Boulder area!
In 2017, a pizza friend mentioned making grilled pizza using a 72-hour dough so after checking out the website of Baking Steel, I have adopted the 72-hour pizza dough as my go-to crust recipe. The recipe is incredibly simple but requires pre-planning by mixing the dough 72 hours in advance and allowing a very slow refrigerator rise to develop texture and flavor. As an alternative to a pizza stone, I have an original baking steel, which works even better in a home oven than a stone to emulate great pizzerias.
Currently, most of my pizza adventures involves checking out new pizzerias in the Denver area where there is a near constant opening of new ventures, especially wood-fired Neopolitan pizza with the most recent being Midici The Neopolitan Pizza Company and its pair of beautiful Italian pizza ovens  . Occasionally, I will delve back into homemade pizza usually for my favorite, Muffuletta Pizza , especially during NFL season.
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