About
Who We Are + How We Started
Colossus was founded in 2018 by Kristin Colazas Rodriguez a pastry chef and baker (formerly of Petit Crenn SF, Outerlands SF, Octavia SF, Osteria Mozza LA) out of a small shared kitchen space in her hometown of Long Beach, CA.
Kristin, who had worked in Long Beach cafés throughout college at CSULB, dreamt of one day opening a café of her own, where the pastries were made fresh daily and changed with the seasons. After college, she decided to pursue this dream by working in restaurants and bakeries in Los Angeles and eventually San Francisco, to learn all she could about scratch baking and seasonal cuisine. She fell in love with bread in the Bay Area, and gained a particular appreciation for long-fermentation, stone-milled whole grain flours, and high hydration loaves, that were unlike anything she had even seen or tasted back home in Southern California. She quickly worked her way up in the Bay Area Restaurant scene and eventually found her way back home, where she started Colossus with pop-ups, a few wholesale accounts, and a presence at local farmer’s markets.
After a year and a half of overnight shifts, hand-mixing and hand-laminating, and pop-ups, we opened our first shop in San Pedro in 2019 (about 6 months before pandemic shutdowns), where we increased our production, all while baking our breads, 9 at a time, all out of cast-iron combo-cookers. Here we upgraded our rolling pin to a professional dough sheeter, and were finally able to increase our production of our handmade croissants.
We opened our second slightly larger retail bakery in Long Beach in 2021, and were able to upgrade our small table-top mixer for a spiral bread mixer and were finally able fit a bread oven into our space, allowing us to increase our bread production and introduce new products, such as baguettes.
Today, Colossus spans 2 towns on either side of the Vincent Thomas Bridge in Long Beach and San Pedro. We bake out of our Long Beach store a seasonally inspired menu of croissant pastries and artisan breads. Our menu changes often with the seasons and the whims of our chefs and bakery artisans. We have fun dreaming and making up our products—- we like to think that joy transfers to the consumer.
We are most known for our signature croissant pastries, the most popular being our kouign amman (flakey croissant dough layered with butter, sugar, vanilla bean + a pinch of salt) and our seasonal danishes which change often with the seasons. Our breads are beloved by those seeking nutrition and flavor in their daily loaf.
A Passion for Sourdough + Whole Grains
Our bread is beloved by those seeking more nutrition and lasting quality out of their artisan bread. Kristin is passionate about whole grains, a variety of grains, high hydration and long fermentation, and this is reflected in our bread offerings! All of our sourdough loaves contain organic whole wheat spelt, red wheat, + whole grain rye in addition to organic sifted wheat flour and organic bread flour. We do not use bleached flours and aim to include as much whole grain flour and variety of whole grains in each loaf as possible while still delivering a light and approachable product. Why? —- well, because we believe it tastes better and is better for you. We have a commitment to organic flours and source all of our flours directly from Camas Country Mill and Central Milling.
Our Pastry Chef, Maile Yi, works daily to maintain consistency in our menu of classic offerings, and innovates with our team to offer new and exciting seasonal offerings and holiday specials.
Coffee at Colossus
Kristin’s husband, Nick Rodriguez, is our Head of Coffee and coffee roaster through his side project Penny Coffee Roasters. Nick is a coffee enthusiast and veteran, having working for roughly 15 years in the LA coffee scene as a barista and manager in local shops and roasteries Rose Park Roasters, Paramount Coffee Project and Steelhead Coffee. Nick’s team at Penny Coffee Roasters roasts coffee for both of our stores while Nick holds it down at Colossus as our Operations Manager.
Food
Our Long Beach Kitchen:
Chef Jeff Paletz has crafted a full brunch and lunch menu, available daily out of our Belmont Shore shop, with the simple goal of creating delicious food that pairs with bread. Our Breakfast Sandwiches, toasts, and baguette sandwiches (found in our pastry case daily) are beloved as daily go-to’s and also make perfect catering options for business meetings and lunches.
From 3 PM- 8PM, our Long Beach location offers a full menu of sourdough pizzas. Our pizzas are made in the same fashion as our breads, with stone-milled whole grain flours, and are long-fermented for a minimum of 24 hours. The result is a large crispy and chewy pizza, with a flavorful crust that is unlike anything else. Our classic cheese + basil is the most popular, but our fan-favorite Calabrian Chile Honey Sausage has become a close second.
We make whole pies to order and offer a simple menu of 14” pizzas, pizza by the slice (available in the pastry case, and subject to availability) + wines by the glass and by the bottle. Wines and pizza are only available at our Long Beach location at this time.
San Pedro
We offer a small menu of our beloved breakfast sandwiches, and grab-and-go foods such as our smoked salmon smorrebrød, seasonal grain bowl (v) and housemade nut + seed granola yogurt bowl at both locations. These items are made freshly in our Long Beach kitchen, and are available daily until sold out.
Owner, Kristin with whole grain wheat berries in Tehachapi, CA in 2018. We would pick up fresh grain bi-weekly to mill for all of our breads and pastries.
The MLT, offered daily out of our Long Beach kitchen.
Kouign amanns being made at LB, one of our signature pastries.
Our croissants are laboriously made from start to finish in our Long Beach open bakery space. It is a 3 day process that highlights the best butter around Isigny St. Mere from Normandy, France and whole grain wheat flour from Camas Country Mill.
Both of our cafe locations are equipped with a full coffee bar. Coffee is roasted by our operations manager Nicholas Rodriguez. We proudly use Straus dairy, Ghost Town Oat Milk and make all of our syrups and sauces in house.
Baguettes were added to our repertoire when we opened Long Beach with a real bread oven.