Sliced bread is a loaf of bread

Bread

Bread is a staple food prepared by cooking a dough of flour and water and often additional ingredients. Doughs are usually baked, but in some cuisines breads are steamed , fried , or baked on an unoiled frying pan . It may be leavened or unleavened...

 which has been pre-sliced and packaged for convenience. It was first sold in 1928, advertised as "the greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped." This led to the popular phrase, "the greatest thing since sliced bread".

History

Otto Frederick Rohwedder

Otto Frederick Rohwedder

Otto Frederick Rohwedder is an American inventor and engineer who created the first automatic bread-slicing machine for commercial use...

 of Davenport, Iowa

Davenport, Iowa

Davenport is a city located along the Mississippi River in Scott County, Iowa, United States. Davenport is the county seat of and largest city in Scott County. Davenport was founded on May 14, 1836 by Antoine LeClaire and was named for his friend, George Davenport, a colonel during the Black Hawk...

, USA invented the first loaf-at-a-time bread-slicing machine. A prototype he built in 1912 was destroyed in a fire and it was not until 1928 that Rohwedder had a fully working machine ready. The first commercial use of the machine was by the Chillicothe Baking Company of Chillicothe, Missouri

Chillicothe, Missouri

Chillicothe is a city in and the county seat of Livingston County, Missouri, United States. The population was 9,515 at the 2010 census. The name "Chillicothe" is Shawnee for "big town", and was named after their Chillicothe, located since 1774 about a mile from the present-day city.Chillicothe is...

, which produced their first slices on July 7, 1928. Their product, "Kleen Maid Sliced Bread", proved a success. Battle Creek, Michigan

Battle Creek, Michigan

Battle Creek is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan, in northwest Calhoun County, at the confluence of the Kalamazoo and Battle Creek Rivers. It is the principal city of the Battle Creek, Michigan Metropolitan Statistical Area , which encompasses all of Calhoun county...

 has a competing claim as the first city to sell bread presliced by Rohwedder's machine; however, historians have produced no documentation backing up Battle Creek's claim. The bread was advertised as "the greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped."

St. Louis

St. Louis, Missouri

St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...

 baker Gustav Papendick bought Rohwedder's second bread slicer and set out to improve it by devising a way to keep the slices together at least long enough to allow the loaves to be wrapped. After failures trying rubber band

Rubber band

A rubber band is a short length of rubber and latex formed in the shape of a loop and is commonly used to hold multiple objects together...

s and metal pins, he settled on placing the slices into a cardboard

Paperboard

Paperboard is a thick paper based material. While there is no rigid differentiation between paper and paperboard, paperboard is generally thicker than paper. According to ISO standards, paperboard is a paper with a basis weight above 224 g/m2, but there are exceptions. Paperboard can be single...

 tray. The tray aligned the slices, allowing mechanized wrapping machines to function.

W.E. Long, who promoted the Holsum Bread

Holsum Bread

Holsum Bread is an American brand of packaged sliced white bread. The Holsum name was being used by many retail bakeries, independently, around the country by the early 1900s. In 1908, the W. E...

 brand, used by various independent bakers around the country, pioneered and promoted the packaging of sliced bread beginning in 1928. In 1930 Wonder Bread

Wonder Bread

Wonder Bread is the name of three North American brands of white bread: One produced by George Weston Bakeries in Canada, another by Hostess Brands in the United States, and the third by Grupo Bimbo in Mexico.- United States :...

, first sold in 1925, started marketing sliced bread nationwide.

Effects

As commercially sliced bread resulted in uniform and somewhat thinner slices, people ate more slices of bread at a time, and ate bread more frequently, because of the ease of 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.

The 1943 U.S. ban on sliced bread

During 1943, U.S. officials imposed a short-lived ban on sliced bread as a wartime conservation measure. The ban was ordered by Claude R. Wickard

Claude R. Wickard

Claude Raymond Wickard served as Secretary of Agriculture under President Franklin D. Roosevelt from 1940 to 1945. Wickard was born on his family farm in Carroll County, Indiana, near Camden...

 who held the position of Food Administrator, and took effect on January 18, 1943. According to the New York Times, officials explained that "the ready-sliced loaf must have a heavier wrapping than an unsliced one if it is not to dry out." It was also intended to counteract a rise in the price of bread, caused by the Office of Price Administration

Office of Price Administration

The Office of Price Administration was established within the Office for Emergency Management of the United States government by Executive Order 8875 on August 28, 1941. The functions of the OPA was originally to control money and rents after the outbreak of World War II.President Franklin D...

's authorization of a ten percent increase in flour prices.

In a Sunday radio address on January 24, Mayor LaGuardia suggested that bakeries that had their own bread-slicing machines should be allowed to continue to use them, and on January 26, 1943, a letter appeared in the New York Times from a distraught housewife:

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!

On January 26, however, John F. Conaboy, the New York Area Supervisor of the Food Distribution Administration, warned bakeries, delicatessens, and other stores that were continuing to slice bread to stop, saying that "to protect the cooperating bakeries against the unfair competition of those who continue to slice their own bread... we are prepared to take stern measures if necessary."

On March 8, 1943, the ban was rescinded. Wickard stated that "Our experience with the order, however, leads us to believe that the savings are not as much as we expected, and the War Production Board tells us that sufficient wax paper

Wax paper

Wax paper is a kind of paper that is made moisture proof through the application of wax....

 to wrap sliced bread for four months is in the hands of paper processor and the baking industry.

Around the world

Because of its convenience, sliced bread is popular in many parts of the world. In Ireland

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

, the most popular bread type is known as "sliced pan", sold in 800- or 400-gram loaves, wrapped in wax paper

Wax paper

Wax paper is a kind of paper that is made moisture proof through the application of wax....

, with the slices conveniently sized for making sandwich

Sandwich

A sandwich is a food item, typically consisting of two or more slices of :bread with one or more fillings between them, or one slice of bread with a topping or toppings, commonly called an open sandwich. Sandwiches are a widely popular type of lunch food, typically taken to work or school, or...

es and toast

Toast

Toast is bread that has been browned by exposure to radiant heat. This browning reaction is known as the Maillard reaction. Toasting warms the bread and makes it firmer, so it holds toppings more securely...

.

Thickness by country

The usual thickness of sliced bread varies by country and company. In Canada it is usually 10mm thick. In Britain, sliced bread is sold as either 'Extra Thick', 'Thick', 'Medium' or 'Thin' varying across the 5-20mm range. This is similarly done in Japan, although the same loaf of bread is labeled by number of slices rather than the thickness of each slice. Popular variants are 6 or 8 slices although 4 or 10 sliced loaves are also common.

In the United States, Texas toast

Texas toast

Texas toast is a type of packaged bread which is pre-sliced at double the typical thickness of most pre-sliced breads. While it can be used in the same manner as ordinary bread slices such as in sandwiches, it is especially useful for dishes involving liquids or where extra thickness can improve...

 is a type of packaged bread which is pre-sliced at double the typical thickness of most pre-sliced breads.

Home slicing

Unsliced loaves of bread are normally sliced in homes using a bread knife freehand, but there also exist knife guides to ensure even slices. Food slicers are also sometimes used for bread.

Popular culture

The phrase "the greatest thing since sliced bread" is a commonly used hyperbolic

Hyperbole

Hyperbole is the use of exaggeration as a rhetorical device or figure of speech. It may be used to evoke strong feelings or to create a strong impression, but is not meant to be taken literally....

 means of praising an invention

Invention

An invention is a novel composition, device, or process. An invention may be derived from a pre-existing model or idea, or it could be independently conceived, in which case it may be a radical breakthrough. In addition, there is cultural invention, which is an innovative set of useful social...

 or development. A writer for The Kansas City Star

The Kansas City Star

The Kansas City Star is a McClatchy newspaper based in Kansas City, Missouri, in the United States. Published since 1880, the paper is the recipient of eight Pulitzer Prizes...

wrote that "the phrase is the ultimate depiction of innovative achievement and American know-how."