Yesterday we talked about the “invention” of the sandwich. What could make the sandwich even better? Sliced bread, of course.
Bread has been being baked in some form for maybe 30,000 years — but sliced bread has only been around since the early 20th century.
Around 1920 most bread was made in people’s kitchens — at home. But by about 1930, the majority of Americans were eating commercially made bread. Those factory produced loaves were designed to be softer than those made at home, because the bread-buying public had come to equate “squeezable softness” with freshness.
So the timing seemed right for an automatic bread slicing machine — the “softer” loaves had become almost impossible to slice neatly at home.
The first automatically sliced commercial loaves were produced in Chillicothe, Missouri. The machine was invented by Otto Rohwedder — an Iowa-born jeweler that lived in Chillicothe. His bread slicer was put into service at his friend Frank Bench’s Chillicothe Baking Company.
Rohwedder’s contraption received a warm welcome in Missouri — the Chillicothe Constitution-Tribune ran an article that noted while some people might find sliced bread “startling,” the typical housewife could expect a thrill of pleasure when she first sees a loaf of this bread with each slice the exact counterpart of its fellows. So neat and precise are the slices, and so definitely better than anyone could possible slice by hand with a bread knife that one realizes instantly that here is a refinement that will receive a hearty and permanent welcome.
The article also recounted that “considerable research” had gone into determining the right thickness for each slice— slightly less than half an inch.
Sliced bread didn’t take long to become a hit around the United States, even though some bakers claimed it was just a fad.
One of the first major brands to distribute sliced bread was Wonder — it originally appeared in stores in Indianapolis, where it was manufactured by the Taggart Baking Company. (An executive for the company dreamed up the bread’s name after being “filled with wonder” while watching the International Balloon Race at the Indianapolis Speedway.) The Taggart Company was bought by the Continental Baking Company who sold Wonder bread nationwide.
A note of interest…. during World War II, factory-sliced bread, including Wonder, was briefly banned by the U.S. Government in an effort to conserve resources, such as the paper used to wrap each loaf to help maintain freshness.
We’ve all said, or heard someone say, “the best thing since slice bread.” I guess now would be a good time to explore the origin of that ….
The Chillicothe Baking Company, when advertising it’s sliced bread included the sentence: “The greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped.” Subsequent advertising in the baking industry compared their developments to the “invention” of sliced bread.
But some sources say the first use of the idiom was in 1952 when Red Skelton said in an interview, “Don’t worry about television. It’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.”
Anyhow, if you use that phrase today, you’re probably dating yourself…..
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