Kermit's Bake Shoppe rises on an industrial block near Point Breeze

CHAD DURKIN keeps his chief obsession sealed in a Tupperware bin in the refrigerator.

"She's going on two months. She's big," he said, gazing lovingly beneath the lid. "I just fed her earlier today."

Durkin's a pastry chef and bread maker, and the object of his affection is a fizzing, bubbling sourdough starter made in the traditional wet-and-sticky poolish (pronounced pou-LASCH) style. It's what he uses to build the complex, flavorful doughs that'll rise inside a new bakery on the western end of Washington Avenue - a strip that seems poised for a rise of its own.

Named after one of owner Adam Ritter's cats, who's in turn named after New Orleans trumpeter Kermit Ruffins, Kermit's Bake Shoppe is set to open later this month at 2204 Washington Ave., a space that last had an unremarkable seafood joint as its tenant. It seems as if it would be difficult for a restaurant to stand out here, given the blue-collar makeup of the street. A beverage wholesaler, a PLCB warehouse and an enormous marble and tile outlet dominate the surrounding blocks, buzzing from dawn to late afternoon with double-parked pickups and noisy forklifts.

But Ritter, who owns the nearby Sidecar, at 22nd and Christian, and is operating manager of Fishtown's Kraftwork, has always relished the challenges that come with unorthodox real estate. Both of those bar openings, in 2006 and 2010 respectively, came ahead of notable residential and retail growth in their neighborhoods. He's hoping for a similar trajectory with Kermit's, straddling Graduate Hospital and Point Breeze.

"I like the idea of the blend of super-industrial, and then dropping a plan like this here on Washington Avenue," said Ritter.

The plan for Kermit's, Ritter explains, is a populist one. Pizzas, soups, salads and Cornish pasties from the Sidecar's Brian Lofink, paired with breads, sticky buns, cakes and other baked goods from Durkin, an accomplished sweet-side chef who's worked for Susanna Foo and recently appeared on TLC's "Next Great Baker" competition.

It'll be open from morning to evening, catering to on-the-go workers and residents looking for reliable dinner options. "It's a pizzeria and a bakery that had a baby, and we call it a bake shoppe," said Ritter. "It's kinda like jazz and blues had a baby, and they called it rock 'n' roll."

Durkin's poolish starter is key to Kermit's pizza base, a durum-based recipe augmented with visible flecks of bran and grain - an uncommon look for pizza dough. "I took a bread approach to add a little bit more flavor," said Durkin. "It's a very different structure. It lends itself to being a good vessel for [specialty pizzas]."

The not-too-thick, not-too-thin result underwent rigorous testing, so hard-core that the Kermit's trio reached a point where pizza consumption was a dreaded proposition. "We got to the point where we would make a pizza, all look at each other, take one slice and cut it into quarters," recalled Ritter ruefully. (Lofink revealed that his personal trainer has not been very happy with him lately.)

All that attention to detail, though, has paid off. Kermit's pizza, which will be available by the slice or whole pie, is an approachable, nicely balanced product, the house four-cheese blend (two types of mozzarella, grana padano, pecorino) jiving with a smooth, simple red sauce made with La Valle tomatoes from Italy.

"We're doing pizza that people can understand, pizza that you can connect with from when you were a kid, and we're doing it well," said Lofink, drawing a distinction between Kermit's approach and more artisan-oriented, Neapolitan-style pizzerias. "We want to make sure you taste everything. We want you to taste the sauce, we want you to taste the cheese."

The goal at Kermit's is straightforward food, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's easier for Lofink to make. "I think cooking simpler is much, much harder than doing stuff that's more difficult and more intricate, with more elements," said the chef. "It's got to be perfect. It has to be done right."

For Durkin, coming off four years working for high-volume Exton manufacturer Desserts International, shrinking his reach has helped him reconnect creatively. "[At my old job], I could never control what my end user was getting, which always bothered me," he said. "Here, I have complete control. I'm two steps away from everything."

Ritter, meanwhile, hopes to better control the customer experience through innovation. He's commissioned local mobile developer CloudMine to build a proprietary iPhone application that Kermit's customers can use to place orders for pickup or delivery via bicycle. "I'm not a tech guy in any sense, but I appreciate the power of technology," said Ritter, who researched apps from the likes of Domino's and Chipotle to get a grasp on their functionality. Kermit's itself will run on a Mac-based iPad POS system that relies on push notifications in lieu of printed-out physical order tickets.

The system is definitely unconventional, but Ritter's clearly not one to pay mind to service-industry orthodoxy. "I would never be able to be in the city center," he said. "I don't know how to talk that talk, think that think. This is what makes sense to me."