Featured Advertisers
Fri, Dec. 04  -   -  Mobile  -  RSS
  

Make a post about this story on FredTalk. Get a printer-friendly version of this page. E-mail this story to a friend.

Amalia Oblitas (above) and her husband, Carlos Saucedo, opened Pancito Bread in Ferry Farm Shopping Center nine months ago.
MIKE MORONES/THE FREE LANCE-STAR

View More Images from this story

Visit the Photo Place

Small bakery, big plans

Couple's new Stafford business proves popular


Date published: 10/24/2009

BY CATHY JETT

Amalia Oblitas and Carlos Saucedo have big plans for the small bakery they opened nine months ago in Ferry Farm Shopping Center.

They'd eventually like to turn Pancito Bread, with its tempting array of freshly baked breads, savory empanadas and luscious desserts, into a franchise.

"This is a very good business. People like it very much," said Oblitas, a former architect who took cooking classes wherever her husband's job as an airport manager took them. "We're looking for investors."

The couple, who met and married in Bolivia, decided to go into business together after the contract for Saucedo's job at the Los Angeles airport was canceled. They and their children moved to Virginia, where he has relatives, and began looking for something to do so they could stay in the United States.

"My daughter and two sons like the United States very much," Oblitas said. "For me, the United States is a big country and there's more opportunity."

Starting a business in the United States would also win it more acceptance than one started in Bolivia or any of the other South American countries that Saucedo's job had taken them to, he said.

"When McDonald's goes into South America, the response is incredible," said Oblitas. "There are big lines every day to go to McDonald's. In Rio de Janeiro, people get dressed up to go to McDonald's."

Oblitas was born in Barcelona, Spain, to a Spanish father, who instilled in her a love of art and architecture, and a strict German mother, who encouraged her daughter's love of baking.

She can still recall the smell of bread dough rising on a table in her mother's kitchen, and a number of the desserts she now sells at Pancito Bread, such as her popular Black Forest cake, are made from her recipes.

Oblitas' family moved to Bolivia, where her father bought land and started a lumber business specializing in chonta, a dark brown wood used to make furniture and paneling. Oblitas finished high school there but didn't go on to college to study architecture until her two oldest children were in high school.

After graduation, she helped design self-sustaining housing projects where people could live and work. Wells provided water, and there were windmills atop the adobe brick houses to generate electricity.


1  2  Next Page  


Follow us on
twitter
fredericksburg.com Facebook page


Date published: 10/24/2009


Most recent reader comments:

1 comment has been posted. (Sorted in reverse order, with most recent post at the top.)

Display comments on this page. | Sort:

PLEASE READ: These reader comments are not moderated. Each user is solely responsible for any message (s)he posts here. The Free Lance-Star does not endorse the views expressed within these comments. All users who post to this Web site must agree to the terms of the FredTalk User Agreement. We rely on our readers to police themselves, and report any content that violates our User Agreement. In accordance with our User Agreement, we reserve the right to remove any post at any time for any reason, and will restrict access of registered users who repeatedly violate our terms. Any reader can report inappropriate content by clicking the "Report this post to admins" link at the bottom of each comment. You need not be registered to report a post.

FANTASTIC! (posted by Emmy , Oct. 24, 2009 12:51 pm)   
The bakery was a vendor at the Chamber of Commerce Halloween party on Thursday. Let me just say that I thought I knew good bread and empanadas. I didn't. The quality of the food that Ms. Oblitas makes is OUTSTANDING!

What do you think?
Enter your FredTalk username and password to post a comment on this story. If you are registered on FredTalk or another part of this site, use that login here. Otherwise, you can just REGISTER here... .

Username: Password:

Post title:


Please keep it brief: (512-character limit)
Please make sure CAPS LOCK is off. Posts in ALL CAPS will be deleted.)


By checking this box, you agree to the terms of the FredTalk User agreement.