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Journalism of Courage
Did your breakfast include toasted bread or sandwich today? If yes, you participated in the marking of a special day in the journey of bread — 97 years ago on this day, the first packet of sliced bread was sold, in Chillicothe, Missouri, USA.
Before the neat slices came along, bread was sold in loaves. People tore off chunks to eat, which probably gave rise to the rather aggressive idiom of “breaking bread together”.
All this changed with Otto Frederick Rohwedder, of Davenport, United States, who decided bread should come pre-cut, in equal-sized slices.
Invention of the machine
Rohwedder owned three jewellery stores, and it is not clear why he chose to move from cutting gems to cutting bread. But then he acquired a degree in optometry before moving on to jewellery, so we do know his choices were original.
Even as a jeweller, Rohwedder liked to improve the machines used for watches and jewellery. At some point, he was convinced he could use his skills to invent a machine for slicing bread, and he sold off his bread and butter — his jewellery stores — to fund this quest.
His timing was not bad: increasingly, Americans had begun buying bread instead of making it at home. Factory-made bread tended to be softer than the home-made variety to give an appearance of freshness, and was thus harder to slice properly.
However, in 1917, Rohwedder faced a major setback, when a fire destroyed his prototype and blueprints. This slowed him down, but did not stop him. In another 11 years, Rohwedder managed to design a machine that could both slice and wrap the bread. How did he decide the size of the slices? By talking to lots of women, and deciding just under half an inch served all purposes best.
The machine was patented, and employed at his friend Frank Bench’s Chillicothe Baking Company. Bench’s bakery thus sold the first-ever sliced bread on July 8, 1928.
Reception
The invention became popular quickly. The Chillicothe Constitution-Tribune in July 1928 noted that a 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 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,” the History Channel’s website quotes.
According to the website of Gold Medal Bakery, “Rohwedder sold his patent rights to the Micro-Westo Company of Iowa, where he led the Rohwedder Bakery Machine Division. There, he helped sell his device to more and more bakeries. He remained little-known, despite his huge impact on American culture — he did not become rich or famous for his invention.”
By 1933, US bakeries were selling more sliced breads than unsliced ones.
In fact, such was its popularity that when sliced bread was banned during World War II, it led to an uproar.
A 1943 report from TIME magazine says, “U.S. housewives… vainly searched for grandmother’s serrated bread knife, routed sleepy husbands out of bed, held dawn conferences over bakery handouts… Then came grief, cussing, lopsided slices which even the toaster refused, often a mad dash to the corner bakery for rolls.”
The ban, imposed as a conservation measure, stayed for only two months. According to TIME, “The New York Times heralded its removal with the headline, “Sliced Bread Put Back on Sale; Housewives’ Thumbs Safe Again.””
Sliced bread gave a boost to another invention that predated it: electric toasters.
Political scientist Aaron Bobrow-Strain wrote in his book White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf, that sliced bread became a “kind of small, edible promise of a better world”.
Rohwedder’s invention gave rise to a phrase still popular today: “the best thing since sliced bread” remains a big compliment.
The good days for sliced bread eventually did end. The industrialisation of bread manufacturing eventually robbed it of nutrients, and today, white, industrially sliced bread is generally seen as a fluttering flag of unhealthy carbohydrates.
However, Rohwedder, working in 1928, did manage to make meal-time quicker and more convenient for millions of people.
