Friday, July 6, 2007

daily bread


During the dinner conversation, someone (it might even have been me) used the phrase "the greatest thing since sliced bread." Which made me wonder when and where sliced bread was invented. Unlike far too many of my questions, this one turned out to have a answer. In fact, it turned out to have a remarkably precise answer.

The July 7, 1928 edition of the Chillicothe, Missouri Constitution-Tribune featured a story noting that pre-sliced bread, cut by a newly-invented bread slicing machine, was now available and that a local business would be "The First Bakers in the World to Sell This Product to the Public." According to the newspaper, "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." Somewhat ironically, the accompanying advertisement read: Announcing: The Greatest Forward Step in the Baking Industry Since Bread was Wrapped.

Sliced bread became popular in the 1930s, mostly due to the growing international sales of Wonder Bread, produced in sliced loaves. A low point in the history of sliced bread came during World War II, when the US Secretary of Agriculture banned the sale of sliced bread. A similar ban in Britain wasn't lifted until 1950. While the reasoning behind the prohibition on sliced bread isn't entirely clear, it was probably to save money and resources, since unsliced bread was less expensive and lasted longer.

Still, the question remained, the encomium of the Chillicothe Constitution-Tribune notwithstanding, why sliced bread was all that great anyway, since, really, how hard is it to use a knife and who cares if their bread is perfectly uniformly cut? We decided that, at least to the extent the expression wasn't wholly ironic, the greatness of sliced bread had nothing to do with any benefits from the consumer's point of view. Instead, sliced bread is great because it's one of the triumphs of marketing, convincing bread buyers to spend more of their money for a product that went stale faster and that they didn't really need.

18 comments:

Jillian said...

That reminds me of something I heard once on TV. Apparently the most lucrative marketing move ever (current as of 10 or 15 years ago) was to add the phrase "repeat if desired" to the directions on shampoo and conditioner bottles. I'm a sucker for good packaging myself:)

S said...

there's also

"the greatest thing since the ballpoint pen"

which makes some sense, if the predecessor to the ballpoint pen was the fountain pen.

Christine said...

very interesting. so we were convinced that sliced bread was better/ i can totally believe this. . .

Sara said...

Love it - the repetition of "the greatest thing since."

Funny how sliced bread then has to be full of all sorts of preservatives too, so that I feel like it never tastes fresh anyway. It always tastes exactly the same until suddenly mold appears.

Where'd you figure this out?

Mrs Macgyver said...

Where did people go back to, before the drawing board was invented?


i do enjoy your writing, and cynical view of the marketing of sliced bread!

DD said...

I guess I would have to say it was great in the view of me being a young child wanting something easy and fast to eat when my Mom was busy. Do you think as a 7 year old I should have been using the bread knife or can I just open up the bag of wonderbread, take the last two whole slices (leaving the heel on the counter for someone later and saving the bag to stuff in my leaking overshoe to color my feet those primary dots of bright colors) and making myself the best PB&J sandwich, EVER?

Phantom Scribbler said...

Great post. As someone who bakes her own bread, though, I have to sheepishly admit that it is harder than you'd think to slice bread thinly and uniformly. I suppose if you were strictly counting your calories, that would matter.

Mrs. Collins said...

Yes, I like to think you can blame everything on advertising. My new thing is the "once-monthly" pills that claim to save so much time over the "once-weekly" pills. "My girlfriend used to have to 'set aside' time once a week to take her calcium supplement. Who has time for that?"

niobe said...

DD: Oh yes, those iconic red, yellow, and blue dots. When I saw them at wonderbread.com, I felt this sudden, completely unexpected, surge of nostalgia for my childhood.

I also learned from the site that the dots represent balloons and that both the logo and the name of the bread come from the feeling of "wonder" experienced by the company's vice president when he saw the International Balloon Race at the Indianapolis Speedway. Sadly, I just couldn't work those facts into my post. But at least I managed to put them in the comments.

Magpie said...

Wow - I'd have guessed that sliced bread predated 1928. And it's fascinating that it was banned during WWII. Huh.

E. Phantzi said...

I never thought about the preservative issue before - I grew up with homemade bread, 12 loaves at a time every Saturday, and learned that it takes a certain knack to slice bread evenly ("Don't press, just saw!"). So that's the flavor difference then, huh? Love the diagram, it was very mysterious while scrolling down slowly and wondering what it was!

Furrow said...

If bread is not sliced, I just tear off great chunks. If there is to be a filling, it goes into a finger-made crater. I cannot slice bread.

Julia said...

As one of those scawy alieeeeeeens I have to admit to thinking that most bread sold in American supermarkets, and Wonderbread in particular, are THE DEVIL. No, not the work thereof, but the DEVIL. They say it's bread. But really, it's cotton balls.
I am very happy to say that in The Old Country bread is still bread, and is never sold sliced. You can buy half a loaf or a quarter. But you have to trouble yourself with slicing it. Actually, The Old City? It's famous for a particular type of bread. So much so that the taste can't really be replicated anywhere outside the city, and not even every bakery in the city gets it exactly right. The guesses as to the reason include the starter, the water, or, I don't know, the secret handshake bakers in the city use. :)

The Oneliner (Christina) said...

ok, i've tried to comment THREE times! Seriously. God hates me. And keeps deleting my comments. Bad God.

I think it sucks to slice bread, and anything that saves me time is worth at least a little extra $.

Reminds me of bottled water. How stupid are we to *buy* water that isn't as healthy (or at least numerous studies suggest) as tap water.

That's it. We're dumb.

Bea said...

The unsliced kind leaves a pretty much un-clean-up-able mess of crumbs on the counter, too.

Very Little Orphan Annie-esque, that phrase.

painted maypole said...

Wow, that was truly informative. Thanks!

Anonymous said...

I am reading a great book, "The United States of Arugula," and they have a chapter that talks about just this issue, although they don't discuss bread the entire time.

I don't mean this as an inflammatory comment, as I know this is can be a touchy subject, but do you think that baby formula is somewhat similar to sliced bread? Something that was heavily marketed to mothers that was of lesser quality than breast milk?

Doughnut said...

I'd much rather have loaves I slice myself for the very reason you state - it stays fresh longer! And there is nothing like homemade bread fresh out of the oven with real butter and jam on it! We just got a breadmaker so will try that out.