Sliced bread 'a world first'

By Will Temple
July 05, 2008 12:00am

SO what was sliced bread the best thing since?

According to the full page ad taken out to announce its arrival, the sliced loaf was “the greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped”.

On July 6, 1928, in the small US town of Chillicothe, Missouri, the local newspaper broke the story on the front - and carried the advertisement on the back - of its eight page edition.

From the following morning the Chillicothe Baking Company would be selling pre-sliced bread at quality grocers in the area, thanks to a powerful multi-bladed machine called the Rohwedder Bread Slicer.

“There was a time when you ground your coffee,” the bakery ad said. “Now you buy it ground.

“Well this is the same sort of sensible, logical improvement. It is indeed a fine product sold a better way.”

On the front page - alongside period tales of Indians and flying aces - The Constitution-Tribune carried the story down a full column: “Sliced bread is made here - Chillicothe Baking Co. the first bakers in the world to sell this product to the public”.

The paper reported: “The idea of sliced bread may be startling to some people.

“Certainly it represents a definite departure from the usual manner of supplying the consumer with bakers loaves.

“As one considers this new service one cannot help but be won over to a realization of the fact that here indeed is a type of service which is sound, sensible and in every way a progressive refinement in Bakers bread service.

“The slices stack perfectly, they are ideal for the making of neat, dainty sandwiches. For toasting purposes they are unexcelled.”

Sliced bread would go on to become a household staple and enter the language as a superlative praising an invention or breakthrough that has had a real impact on our daily lives.

But at the time the bakery even published four-step instructions on how to use the new product, starting from opening – not tearing - the wrapper to removing the pins holding the slices together and folding the packaging back down to preserve freshness.

The loaves would be sold at a discount for a week and from July 16 the price would rise by a penny.

The bread slicer that made it all possible was invented by Iowa man Otto Rohwedder who built his first prototype in 1917 but it was not put into commercial use until 1928 when the Chillicothe Baking Co. took it on.

As The Constitution-Tribune explained at the time:

“This machine gently but rapidly pushes the loaf through a series of alternating blades which slice the entire loaf simultaneously.

“There is no crumbling and no crushing of the loaf and the result is such that 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 fellows.”

The story of sliced bread was buried in the paper’s archives for decades until the paper’s current news editor Catherine Stortz Ripley found the material while researching a history book in 2001.

Among other questions at the time was the optimal thickness of the slice – decided at “slightly less than one half of an inch” – and whether the invention would “sound the death knell of the bread knife”.

The paper decided the knife was not done for just yet – but the invention would mean the chore of keeping it sharp would be rendered easier.

Of course - it would be up to Australian know-how to properly solve that problem several decades later with the introduction of the Staysharp knife in 1965.