Jersey Shore Magazine

j e r s e y s h o r e • F A L L / H O L I D A Y 2 0 1 6 85 into German and French breads, enhanced by a course with French baker Dan Leader of Bread Alone. In 1997, at age twenty-one, Introna opened his Italian Specialty Retail Store primarily "as a bread baker" with a focus on his true passion: Hoboken Style Italian Bread, a bread known for its hard, crunchy crust, with an airy and chewy (but not fluffy) consistency. But opening the store wasn't first without a lot of trial and error, not in the dynamics of running a business per se, but in achieving a high quality Italian bread that could be made at the Jersey Shore. "Many people said to me, 'You can't get good bread down the Shore. It's too soft. The salt kills the yeast.' I agreed with that," says Introna. "I was having a hard time making the crust crumb, which is the carameliza- tion of the crust." To solve this problem, Introna lit- erally took his "show on the road." He made dough on the boardwalk; he made dough in the back of his Bronco on Route 70; he made dough in Point Pleasant and dough in Bricktown. "I was inspired by the bakers on the French coastline, how they adjust their recipes to accommo- date the salt in the air." Finally, voila, after much experimentation, Introna realized that he needed to cut down the thirty-two ounces of salt typical- ly used for one hundred pounds of Italian bread dough to just ten! Naturally, with further modifica- tions and new enhancements in the baking industry, that formula has evolved over time, but Introna's com- mitment to constantly learning new techniques in the science of bread making hasn't. He credits himself not as a master bread maker, but instead as someone who knows how to rec- ognize and draw on the strengths of others. "I surround myself with peo- ple better than me. I embrace their knowledge and have them train my people. I utilize everybody for their strength," he comments. And like the bakeries that shaped his early knowledge, Introna's recall of people and processes that have helped him build his business over the years is near encyclopedic. He is a big fan of giving credit where credit is due. He can't say enough about Joe Desiderio, an eighty-two year old baker who was "instrumen- tal in teaching old-school methods" for four years at Joe Leone's until The Joe Leone's bakery produces morn than 1,200 loaves per day in a large variety of styles, doughs, and fillings. continued on page 86 Joe Leone's Point Pleasant Beach location.

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