We report the two-stage single-pump configuration of an erbium-doped fiber amplifier, in which a Sagnac interferometer is introduced to reduce the most important contribution of amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) noise, providing significant improvement on the amplifier performance. A Sagnac interferometer, made from a high birefringence fiber loop, is included between the first and second stages. It is designed to provide transmittance with a period of 46 nm that allows us to adjust the minimum transmission around 1530 nm (peak of ASE noise) and maximum transmission at 1550 nm (signal wavelength). For optimizing the configuration, we measure the erbium-doped fiber parameters and simulate the amplification of the signal along the fiber. In the experiment, a significant absorption coefficient for pump and signal is found. The absorption looks to be too strong for the background absorption, and we suppose that it may be caused at least partly by excited state absorption (ESA). Including the absorption coefficient allows very good correspondence between simulation and experiment. Experimental results show that with a simple configuration, we obtain up to 53-dB amplification with only 73 mW of pump power.