What's So Great About Sliced Bread?
C'mon, you know you've said it: “It's
the greatest thing since sliced bread.” Of course, since
practically nobody knows what unsliced bread
is anymore, that bit of hyperbole has lost some of its punch over the
years. Still, pretty much everybody knows that the classic idiomatic
phrase refers to something extraordinary – especially a newer
discovery – that will likely be a significant improvement. “But
what,” you may ask, “is so great about sliced bread?”
Bread has been
around for a long, long time. There's archaeological evidence that a
rudimentary form of flatbread was known in Europe thirty-thousand
years ago. Most of the breads we recognize in Western culture today
are the leavened variety that come out of ovens as loaves. Some
loaves are round, others are elongated, some are oval shaped, and
some, like what we commonly call “sandwich bread,” are kind of
squarish. The round, elongated, or oval loaves can be broken apart
for consumption or even eaten “as is,” but the traditional
“sandwich loaf” pretty much has to be sliced in order to be of
any use. And that can be a problem.
People who live in
the “modern age” where all you have to do to make a sandwich is
open a plastic bag and take out a couple of perfectly machine-sliced
pieces of bread don't really have an appreciation for what it takes
to slice bread. My grandmother had to do it. And I do it myself. It takes a good bread knife
and a keen eye to achieve uniformity. You don't want slices that are
too thick or too thin. Or a thick slice paired with a thin slice. You
particularly don't want slices that start out thick at the top and
wind up thin at the bottom or vice-versa. There's also a talent to
slicing up a loaf of bread – especially fresh bread – without
crushing it as you cut. Slicing bread can be a time-consuming,
frustrating chore.
Enter a guy named
Otto F. Rohwedder, an inventor from Iowa. Over the course of about a
decade of trial and error, he came up with a concept for “A Machine
For Slicing An Entire Loaf Of Bread At A Single Operation,” an idea
he patented on November 26, 1928. But the initial reaction among
commercial bread bakers was not exactly what Rohwedder no doubt hoped
it would be. In fact, the contraption was something of a hard sell at
first.
To
begin with, bakers were unconvinced that consumers wanted
pre-sliced bread. Up to that
point, I guess, nobody had been beating down the bakery doors asking
for such a commodity. Then there were concerns about freshness. An
unsliced loaf of bread stays fresher longer. Once you cut into it, it
begins to go stale fairly quickly. To address these concerns, the
inventor originally conceptualized the use of pins to hold the sliced
loaf together. Since unpinning individual slices of bread wasn't an
idea that appealed to anybody, Rohwedder approached the issue from a
different angle: he amended the way the sliced bread would be
packaged. There were no convenient plastic bags with little twist
ties in those days. Instead, Rohwedder suggested wrapping each
freshly-sliced loaf in thick wax paper. And so it was done.
Eventually, cellophane took the place of wax paper before ultimately
giving way to plastic. Come to think of it, I can actually remember
wax paper-wrapped bread covered in cellophane packaging. Jeez, I'm
old.
Anyway, the Chillicothe Baking Company
of Chillicothe, Missouri, decided to give Rohwedder’s
unconventional device a shot. They installed his machine and began to
sell “Kleen Maid Sliced Bread” on July 7, 1928. The local
newspaper carried both a front page news story and a full back page
advertisement for the new-fangled gimmick in an effort to convince
people that sliced bread really was a great thing. Selling points
included statements like, “After all the idea of sliced bread is
not unlike the idea of ground coffee, sliced bacon and many other
modern and generally accepted products which combine superior results
with a saving of time and effort.” The article goes on to
prophetically enthuse, “So neat and precise are the slices, and so
definitely better than anyone could possibly slice by hand with a
bread knife that one realizes instantly that here is a refinement
that will receive a hearty and permanent welcome.”
Needless to say, sliced bread quickly
became the greatest thing since......well, you get the idea. By 1930,
the Taggart Baking Company of Indianapolis had built its own slicing
machines and was sending its soon-to-be-iconic product, Wonder Bread,
pre-sliced and wrapped in wax paper packaging festooned with red, yellow, and
blue balloons, to retailers nationwide.
And now there is legislation pending in
Jefferson City asking Missouri lawmakers to officially designate July
7 as “Missouri Sliced Bread Day.” After all, Chillicothe, a town
of about 9,500 folks, goes all out to promote its claim to fame as “The
Home of Sliced Bread.” There's a recently erected historical marker
in front of the red brick building at 100 Elm Street that formerly
housed the Chillicothe Baking Company and there's an annual Sliced
Bread Jam Bluegrass Music Festival, too. Supporters of the bill
recognize Chillicothe's “piece of very positive history” and
believe such a celebration would stimulate the local economy by
bringing more tourists to northern Missouri. According to the
Chillicothe News, if the proposed holiday becomes a reality, local
residents are encouraged to engage in “appropriate activities and
events” to celebrate Otto Rohwedder’s game changing creation.
I suppose it's a good thing I don't live anywhere
near Chillicothe because I would have a hard time engaging in any
appropriate activities. Personally, I don't eat sliced bread. Not
since I started baking my own bread many, many years ago. Now, I'd be
lying like a politician if I said sliced bread had never passed my
lips. Are you kidding? I grew up in the '50s and '60s when moms were
assured that the aforementioned Wonder Bread “helps build strong
bodies twelve ways.” I think I got shortchanged on about eleven of
those ways, but that's neither here nor there. The point is I grew up
consuming my fair share of the soft, gummy commodity we're talking
about celebrating. But no more. I can count on one hand the number of
times I've had to make an emergency purchase of store-bought sliced
bread in the last several years. Of course, back in Rohwedder's day, bread was
still bread; made from flour, water, salt, and a little yeast.
Concerns about bread going stale were legitimate in those days
because real bread really would spoil in a fairly short amount of
time. Unlike today's preservative and additive laden bread-like
substances that can sit out on the counter for weeks at a time and
still maintain what passes for “freshness.” In other words, it's
still nice and soft and gummy. But I still wish Chillicothe luck in their
pursuit of sliced bread fame. It's not their fault, or Otto
Rohwedder's, either, that the baking industry would ultimately turn a
basic, natural dietary staple into a form of chemically enhanced
Frankenbread.
Oh, and in case you ever find yourself
thinking, “I wonder what was the greatest thing before sliced
bread?”, I may have an answer. Apparently that would be wrapped
bread since early advertising for sliced bread
touted it as “the greatest forward step in the baking industry
since bread was wrapped.” Although I imagine if you were to
start saying, “That's the greatest thing since wrapped bread,”
people would just give you funny looks. And who knows? Maybe someday
I'll make a pilgrimage to Chillicothe just so I can have a slice of
bread and stimulate the local economy. I've done stranger things.
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