Colombo Baking Company was a bakery founded in 1896, known for its

sourdough bread Sourdough or sourdough bread is a bread made by the fermentation of dough using wild lactobacillaceae and yeast. Lactic acid from fermentation imparts a sour taste and improves keeping qualities. History In the ''Encyclopedia of Food Microbiolo ...

. Located at 580 Julie Ann Way in

Oakland, California Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast of the United States, West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third ...

, it became a wholly owned division of

Hostess Brands Hostess Brands is an American-based bakery company formed in 2013. It owns several bakeries in the United States that produce snack cakes under the Hostess and Dolly Madison brand names and its Canadian subsidiary, Voortman Cookies Limited, pro ...

. Colombo sourdough rolls were manufactured at a satellite bakery in

Sacramento, California ) , image_map = Sacramento County California Incorporated and Unincorporated areas Sacramento Highlighted.svg , mapsize = 250x200px , map_caption = Location within Sacramento C ...

. Along with Toscana bakery of

Oakland Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third largest city overall in the Bay A ...

and Parisian bakery of

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

, Colombo became part of the San Francisco French Bread Company (SFFBC) which was acquired by Hostess in 1994. The brands competed locally in the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Go ...

. As a result of Hostess liquidating the company, Colombo shuttered its operation in November, 2012. The SFFBC, through Colombo's bakery, was the maker of

Emperor Norton Joshua Abraham Norton (February 4, 1818January 8, 1880), known as Emperor Norton, was a resident of San Francisco, California who, in 1859, proclaimed himself "Norton I., Emperor of the United States". In 1863, after Napoleon III invaded Mexi ...

San Francisco Sourdough Snacks, which ceased production in 2012, prior to the Hostess liquidation. The Colombo brand was acquired by

Bimbo Bakeries USA Bimbo Bakeries USA, Inc. () is the American corporate arm of the Mexican multinational bakery product manufacturing company Grupo Bimbo. It is the largest bakery company in the United States. The company, headquartered in Horsham, Pennsylvani ...

in August 2014.

References in popular culture

A shopping bag of Parisian brand bread is central to the plot of the 1997 theatrical film ''

Home Alone 3 ''Home Alone 3'' is a 1997 American family comedy film directed by Raja Gosnell in his directorial debut, produced by John Hughes, and starring Alex D. Linz and Haviland Morris. The film tells the story of an 8-year-old boy who defends his hom ...

''. The character Hess (

Marian Seldes Marian Hall Seldes (August 23, 1928 – October 6, 2014) was an American actress. A five-time Tony Award nominee, she won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for '' A Delicate Balance'' in 1967, and received subsequent nominations ...

) buys loaves of the said bread, which she carries in the brand's French-flag design shopping bag, while a quartet of internationally wanted high-profile criminals uses a similar shopping bag of the same brand to smuggle a stolen highly-classified military computer chip (which they intend to hand over to a notorious terrorist organization) inside a radio-controlled car. The two bags get mixed up at airport security, and the terrorists are thwarted in retrieving the car because a large number of people in the airport terminal have bags from the bakery.

References

Food and drink in the San Francisco Bay Area Hostess Brands Companies based in Oakland, California 1896 establishments in California Bakeries of California 2012 disestablishments in California {{Food-company-stub

References in popular culture

See also

References