Is sliced bread the greatest thing?

“Here is a refinement that will receive a hearty and permanent welcome

The Smithsonian Museum quoted the above from a reporter talking about the first factory produced sliced bread. And how right he was. It even led to that saying. And yes, sliced bread is still very much alive and well, although apparently declining - in the UK anyway.

When I first thought about writing this post I thought it would be very, very brief, but of course when you start to look into these things you find there is a lot more than you thought, to say.

Why am I writing about it? Well one thing we have noticed of late is that Woolworths is very irritatingly, to us anyway, slicing virtually all of their superior sourdough semi home baked bread, before packaging. We really don't like sliced bread, as it goes off rather more quickly than unsliced bread, and doesn't freeze as well either. But today David saw an actual unsliced superior fruit loaf and couldn't resist buying it, because, as he said, they always slice it. He also encountered a lady choosing an unsliced sour dough loaf and asking the store people to slice it. Which of course, they will do. All bakeries, including in supermarkets will.

So let's begin at the beginning with a bit of history and a sort of answer to this question.

"What was the best thing before sliced bread?" George Carlin

Well obviously many, many things depending on what you are interested in life. Because, of course the phrase about the greatest thing, doesn't just apply to sliced bread. It applies to any kind of innovation - and there have been literally millions of them since man stood upright. In terms of bread though, the greatest things before sliced bread are also many. Over centuries the way that grains were grown, harvested and ground were refined. The way that bread was baked was refined. The innovations were countless. In the 1890s in America around 90% of bread was baked at home. And so the commercial manufacture of bread would have been one of those big steps. The immediately prior improvement though was that the bread was pre-wrapped. Well that was what I read, but now that I think more on that I wonder why that was an improvement. I imagine that we are talking at best about waxed paper here, not plastic - a much later invention, and I'm not really sure that that would have kept the bread fresher for longer. But then again, maybe it would. It was also not necessarily more hygienic. At home most houses had bread bins of one kind or another in which bread was kept away from insects and rodents. Maybe it was just a gimmick. Packaging has certainly added to the woes of the world in oh so many ways. But I won't deal with that today.

Anyway in 1928 the first commercially sliced bread appeared. The machine was the invention of one Otto Frederick Rohwedder in Iowa. His earliest version dates back to 1912, but the first commercial use was by a Michigan bakery, although I believe there is a rival undocumented claim from a Missouri baker. They were both around the same time anyway. But it didn't catch on.

The first machines were unable to package the bread, and the slices had to be kept together with unwieldy rubber bands. When they did start packaging it the slices were initially kept together with a pin placed through the loaf. Also not very satisfactory. But nevertheless it was pretty revolutionary as that reporter said:

“The housewife can well experience a thrill of pleasure when she first sees a loaf of this bread with each slice the exact counterpart of its fellow. 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.”

Which implies that it was an aesthetic thing, and a novelty rather than practical. Well aesthetics change and novelty wears off. Usually, but by the time WW2 came around and the government tried to ban sliced bread for economic reasons (later disproved) in 1943, they were forced to rescind the ban because of its unpopularity. The following is part of a letter written to the New York Times by a housewife, and typical of the general outrage. (Thanks to the Smithsonian Magazine for the quote)

"I should like to let you know how important sliced bread is to the morale and saneness of a household. My husband and four children are all in a rush during and after breakfast. Without ready-sliced bread I must do the slicing for toast—two pieces for each one—that's ten. For their lunches I must cut by hand at least twenty slices, for two sandwiches apiece. Afterward I make my own toast. Twenty-two slices of bread to be cut in a hurry!"

And I'm sure that this is still the driving force behind the sales of sliced bread. The sad thing is that the plain white variety - the unhealthiest - is also the cheapest, and therefore the bread eaten by the poor, who then put something else equally cheap and possibly unhealthy in between, thus adding to poor diet and even obesity.

"As commercially sliced bread resulted in uniform and somewhat thinner slices, people ate more slices of bread at a time. They also ate bread more frequently, because of the ease of getting and eating another piece of bread. This increased consumption of bread and, in turn, increased consumption of spreads, such as jam, to put on the bread." Wikipedia

In Australia the first sliced bread was sold bu the Sunshine Bread Co. in Sydney in 1939 but it was to be Tip Top bread from Westons who really made a mark as late as 1958. Which sort of rings true to me too in England. As a child I do not remember ever having sliced bread. We bought bread from the baker and it was sliced at home. Even when I was at university in the 60s I think I bought unsliced bread in the Union Shop. The refectories may have used sliced bread for breakfast and to go with cheese, but in the shop it was unsliced. I remember succumbing to the smell of it when I went in there sometimes, buying a loaf (a small one), a lump of cheese and some butter and taking it back to my room for an afternoon treat. Our group kitchenette must have had a bread knife in its equipment. I also remember my grandmother used to slice bread holding the loaf upright against her chest and cutting it with a knife from the far side towards her chest. I suppose this was potentially dangerous, but I don't think she was alone in doing this. I have mentioned this habit to others over the years and they also remember this happening in their homes. Nobody in their right minds would do that now. And whatever happened to small loaves too?

Over time it became obvious that plain white bread - often containing too much sugar - was bad for you. We needed fibre, and over time the bread companies who churned out the sliced bread improved their product, developing, first wholemeal, and later wholegrain breads of increasing variety, even white high fibre, for those children who supposedly didn't like seeds in their bread - one of my grandsons for one. But this trend is just demonstrative of the trend away from factory bread and into artisan and sourdough breads. It began with the hot bread shops of the 70s - shortly after we arrived here - 'real bread baked on the premises' was a novelty at that stage. Then came Baker's Delight which started small but became a major franchiser. Later still the supermarkets got into the act, with their own 'home baked' - well store finished - artisan breads where sourdough is a big thing. And finally back to the small artisan baker. In England in 2017 1/4 of the the bread sold came from artisan bakers. So you would think, would you not that health food shops - yes health food shops - would sell unsliced artisan produced bread. But no. I recently tried to buy some gluten free, but tempting looking bread - a loaf of - for a friend who was dining with us - but they only had sliced and it cost a fortune. Nothing for the poor there.

And it's been sort of the same in France, where there have always been bakers in every town and village, but some of these turned to the finishing off technique now followed by our supermarkets, and their hypermarkets and so the government brought in legislation stating that you could not claim to be an 'artisan boulanger' unless you actually made the bread from start to finish on your own premises.

And it is the semi artisan breads that Woolworths is now slicing. I do completely understand why a busy housewife who has to prepare packed lunches for the family might prefer to buy her bread ready sliced. I also understand why people who make sandwiches for a living might prefer it. Especially if you are making those very elegant club sandwiches with no crusts. Perhaps the factories cut off the crusts too.

But why else would you buy it sliced? I just don't understand why. I am told that some find it too much like hard work to slice bread - you get uneven slices, it's an art ... Really? I guess if you want it thin sliced it's tricky but guess what - you can get a slicing guide to help you!

Which to my mind is taking kitchen gadgets a step too far.

No - much better to slice it yourself. And it's strangely satisfying too. And aesthetically pleasing - rough and chunky is the modern aesthetic. Back to the cave days really.

Of course, it's only the western world that needs to slice their bread anyway. And even some sectors of the western world don't really need to slice it. Take the baguette. Yes you can slice it, and restaurants do, but I suspect that many households don't. I fondly remember doing the twice daily trip to the boulangerie, with my French exchange friend Simone, with both of us breaking off bits and eating them on the way home. I don't remember it being sliced for us at mealtimes either. I think we just broke off as much as we needed. It's an optional thing and easy enough to do.

But in the rest of the world, where the vast majority of the bread is a flatbread of some kind, whether leavened or unleavened, the bread is virtually always, just torn apart as needed. Again I suppose you could slice it, and if you call pizza bread then yes I suppose you do, but mostly it is torn into pieces and dipped into things or used to scoop up sauces, or kept whole and rolled around things. No knife required.

The sad truth is though, that sales of sliced white bread are probably pretty stable and it's the poor who are buying it. Once again if you want to eat healthily you have to be rich.