Joe Edwardsen. Used by permission of Joe Edwardsen
Owner and Executive Chef Joe Edwardsen has been carving out a niche on North Avenue, in Baltimore’s up and coming Penn Station neighborhood, since 2005. On Preakness afternoon two weeks ago, Joe took time to sit down with me for a short conversation to talk about his restaurant, Joe Squared, and pizza. The coal firer, originally from Rochester, New York, was amicable, funny and opinionated. We ended up talking about influential pizzerias, early training, franchising, some of the growing pains after installing the coal fired oven, needed improvements to make his pizzas even better and about a new restaurant venture.
Joe worked in a pizza shop while he was in high school and then he cooked in an Italian restaurant while in college. After Joe got his bachelors degree, he studied in Italy for a time at the University of Verona. Joe mentioned he started spending more time in kitchens and markets than studying. After spening some time in Firenze (Florence), Italy and coming back to America, Joe apprenticed at Ellicott City’s well regarded Tersiguel’s French Country Restaurant and he thought about opening a French restaurant for a while.
However, Joe mentioned “pizza was an entirely open market” in Baltimore. “There was absolutely nothing but a bunch of people selling the same crappy pizza. They pretty much all used Don Pepino sauce and cubed Cisco cheese. You couldn’t get a good slice in town”
PB: Is there an inspirational pizza place you went to which made you a pizza convert and maybe made you think that opening a pizzeria was something you wanted to do?
Joe Edwardsen: Oh, [Frank] Pepe’s! Pepe’s and Sally’s [Apizza] is the best pizza in the world. I still try to get to Frank Pepe’s once a year. (Pizza Blogger FYI, the Apizza used in the name of many New Haven, Connecticut pizzerias is pronounced “ah-Beetz”)
PB: Then the big question is, if you had to pick one, would it be the Original Tomato Pie or the Clam Pizza from Pepe’s?
Joe Edwardsen: I’m a clam pizza man! I love their [Frank Pepe's] clam pizza. We do a clam pizza here as well and shuck our own clams.
PB: Many people outside of New York and New Haven [Connecticut] are unfamiliar with coal oven pizza. What are some of your thoughts about using a coal oven?
Joe Edwardsen: It’s a whole different style of pizza. These aren’t hand tossed pizzas, they are stretched pizzas. The dough is too soft to actually throw it up in the air. To make a dough you can actually toss up or spin around, you need a different texture. When we are cooking in the coal oven, that real high temperature hot, you need too moist a dough to be able to toss.
PB: What do you think are some of the reasons for the resurgence of coal fired ovens?
Joe Edwardsen: It all started with wood fired ovens not too long ago. Maybe the saturation just got to the point where people moved onto coal fired ovens. Or it may have been the TV shows like the Food Network, where people started to know about [Frank] Pepe’s and about Sally’s.
For a while it was all about the D.O.P.(Denominazione di Origine Protetta) pizzas and getting back to the Napoli roots, which is not coal, it’s wood. More and more places still continue to pop up like that. But we use coal and that’s patriotic, coal is very American (the first pizzerias in America used coal fired ovens).
PB: The coal oven does give a moderate amount of smokiness to the pizza, but an oven is only going to cook something as good as you put into it. What really caught me about your pizza is the sourdough.
Joe Edwardsen: It’s a 200 year old sourdough starter.
Built to be fueled by wood, Edwardsen installed a very high temperature titanium screen below where the coal is placed to convert the oven into a coal fired oven.
PB: I’ve noticed from when I first started coming here that there were moments after you got the coal oven when the pizza was inconsistent. What have you learned or changed over time to get the pizzas where they are today?
Joe Edwardsen: Oh dear lord they were inconsistent! We had to increase the moisture, the wetness of the dough, to slow down the cooking process. We also doubled the amount of starter we use now, so it’s a much tangier dough going in [the oven] than it was before. Also, we build a much longer fire than we did before. We used to start with a shorter, more compact fire. Now, we stretch the coals out as dinner goes on. As the inside of the oven gets cooler, we extend the heat out….it’s particular to that oven. I’m sure every coal oven is going to be different, it’s all about getting familiar with your oven. When we have an 800°F floor, we’ve got as much as 2200°F reflecting off the top of our dome…..so you’ve got to be very careful where you put them [the pizzas].
PB: How involved are you in the pizza making process?
Joe Edwardsen: I don’t make as many pizzas as I used to, but I still make a good amount of them. I’ve got some other people fully trained now to help out.
PB: Do you favor a cold rise or a warm rise for your dough?
Joe Edwardsen: We do a mix of both actually. We begin with the [sourdough] starter, which we build up the night before. Then we throw the starter into the dough mixer [with some additional flour and water] and made a biga. Then we take the biga and put it in the cooler and let it slow rise overnight. In the morning we let it warm up for 30 to 45 minutes. Then we add it to the remainder of the dough ingredients, get one rise out of that and then scrape the dough into pans. Then we put [the pans] into the walk in and pull it out for pizza making as we need it. (In an e-mail I sent to Joe for futher details, he confirmed that after the biga is incorporated into the remainder of the dough bill, the final bulk rise takes place at room temperature before the dough is scraped into pans and put in the walk in. Joe mentioned that depending on the strength of the biga and the temperature and humidity on any given day, this final rise can take anywhere from 15 minutes to 2 hours).
People often say I should franchise and I’m like, how? Different temperatures, different humidities…some days you need more flour or less flour…you don’t know where you’re at. You have to feel it out.
PB: Are you happy with where your pizza is right now, or is there still something you want to change going forward?
Joe Edwardsen: On a good night, I wouldn’t change anything about our pizza. Our biggest problem is when we get hit too hard. It’s a coal oven and keeping the heat in there is tough. We recently got 160 pizza orders in two hours and you just can’t keep that much heat in the oven. It’s still going to be a great pizza after a couple of hours [of being busy], but not as good as the first pizza that came out, and that’s just kind of the nature of it. Unfortunately, we’ll never have that consistent of a product because we are working with inconsistent ingredients. But, when it’s on, it’s dead on. And even when it’s not, it’s not crap.
We are changing our pans soon. I’ve got these perforated flat ones coming and we’re getting little stands for them so the dough will be able to breathe and we won’t have the divot. The pizzas tend to get a little soggy in the middle.
PB: Do you do a lot of delivery?
Joe Edwardsen: A little. It’s a much better product right out of the oven. You have to realize, something that heats up that quick is gonna cool that quick. [Delivery customers] sometimes complain it’s soggy or cool. We put a little stamp on the box saying to throw the pizza in the oven if you have to, but there is nothing we can do. It’s what happens to a pizza. And if your pizza doesn’t do that, there is something weird in your pizza. Something not natural.
PB: What is your favorite thing about your pizza?
Joe Edwardsen: pauses…..I like the crust.
PB: Ahhh, that’s where it all starts!
In showing me around the kitchen, Joe confirmed that he uses D.O.P. San Marzano tomatoes and does not cook them before putting the crushed tomatoes on the pizza and firing the pizzas in the oven. I inquired whether he was using the Mozzarella di Bufala being made in Vermont or California, to which Joe emphatically responded he is still getting his bufala from Italy. He mentioned he has “tried the Vermont and California stuff, but the longer it sits in that water fresh, the more it soaks up and becomes unusable after a while. We always strain our mozzarella regardless, but the California ones soak up water too fast and does not taste as good as Italian [bufala].”
Finally, heads up to barbecue fans! Joe is planning to open another restaurant across the street from Joe Squared, which will be called Cuadrado. It will be a Mexican barbacoa establishment featuring agave and banana leaf wrapped meats, available both marinated and un-marinated, and slow smoked to generate an additional level of flavor. It appears Edwardsen is ahead of the curve on North Avenue once again.
I really appreciate Joe’s honesty about the true nature of his oven! Wow, admitting that consistency is impossible! We all know it and now we know the reasons why. Thanks for going into so much detail about the process and the effects of the weather and oven temperature on the outcome of the dough.
I have only eaten this pizza once and that was just about a year ago. I will definetly go back to see how the pizza has improved.
The new screens came in for the pizzas and they are working out well. No more soggy middle.
Hey Joe, thanks for the update!