Back When America Banned Sliced Bread

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SeaBreeze

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Modern life is full of conveniences but few things are as convenient as sliced bread.

Just think about it. To make a sandwich all you need to do is open a bag and remove the required number of pre-cut slices. No need to take out the whole loaf, find a knife and saw into it resulting in uneven slices and broken edges.

It’s almost funny that it took humans more than two thousand years to figure that out. Now imagine someone trying to take away this great invention.

The United States Government attempted to do that in 1943. The Second World War was in full swing, and America, like most Allied countries, was trying to conserve resources for the war effort. Food was one of them.

The War Food Administration was created exactly for this purpose—to oversee the production and distribution of food to meet war and essential civilian needs. Its most important job was to prevent food wastage. Claude R. Wickard was at that time the head of the Administration, as well as the Secretary of Agriculture. He got this great idea—ban sliced bread because it was making Americans eat more.

The Greatest Invention

Sliced bread was invented by Otto Frederick Rohwedder, an ophthalmologist turned jeweler who owned three jewelry stores in St. Joseph, Missouri. It was perhaps while selling earrings and necklaces to women, Rohwedder overheard housewives discussing the burdensome and tiresome job of slicing bread.


As early as 1912, Rohwedder had a prototype ready but he had trouble deciding on the thickness of the slices. So Rohwedder put together a brief questionnaire and placed it as an ad in several large newspapers. Over the course of a few months, more than 30,000 housewives responded with their choice of slice thickness.

Four years later, Rohwedder sold his jewelry business and with the funds set up a workshop in an abandoned warehouse to manufacture his machine. Unfortunately, in 1917, a fire broke out at the workshop and destroyed his prototype along with hundreds of blueprints and thousands of hours of dedicated effort.

The fire set Rohwedder back by at least 10 years, but eventually, in 1928, Rohwedder had a fully working machine ready that not only sliced the bread but wrapped it up as well.

sliced-bread-machine6
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I still like to occasionally buy a loaf of crusty French bread, cut it thick, slather it with real butter, none of that margarine stuff and enjoy.

The remainder of the loaf I freeze into cut slices, and when needed I put then in the toaster, and use Philly Onion Dip rather than the butter, nice change.
 
Amazing to think that it's all relatively new isn't it SB? I wonder just how many sliced loaves are baked all around the world on a daily basis today..

I buy sliced bread all the time..although I do make my own occasionally..but I rarely buy white bread, almost always thick sliced wholemeal, and I freeze it too, like you Mizzkitt.
 

I never buy sliced bread. I never have my bakery slice loaves I may buy. I prefer buying thin baguettes that allow me to tear off a hunk and eat the same, or cut off a slice and dip it in olive oil, garlic and oregano. It seems that the loaf stays fresher, longer, when it is not sliced. That makes sense, as less air is drying the (now partially) exposed slices. Of course, sliced bread, from the mega-bakeries, contain so many chemical additives, to keep them "fresh," that drying out is not an issue, as long as you're fine with ingesting who knows what with your bread. I eat mostly gluten-free bread, so I bake a lot of my loaves, myself. Lord knows that I did eat a ton of sandwiches as a kid. I sure hope that the chemical additive content of the bread was lower than what I read on labels, now! (Yes, I know that there are more natural baking companies out there, now, who produce "cleaner" sliced loaves. Still, I read their labels, too, and there always seems to be ingredients I would never want to ingest.)
 
As a kid I think the sliced white bread my mother bought was Silvercup brand, and she also had sliced rye and pumpernickel around too that had an older woman on the label. These days we only buy Orowheat Oatnut bread for the occasional tuna or ham sandwich. We buy small french loaves from Costco that we bake in the oven for steak, shrimp salad, etc. sandwiches, or to eat alongside of crab legs. We always have some bagels on hand too for lox (smoked salmon) or other things, and croissant rolls.
 
I remember bread from bakeries that my mother patronized. The loaves were whole, but there was a bread slicer for people who preferred to buy sliced. It shook and jiggled as it sliced the bread; I found it fascinating. With the exception of French bread I buy my bread sliced today, but it comes in a plastic wrapper. I haven't seen a bakery bread slicer in years.
 
Sliced bread is here to stay!

"Whatever might have been the reason, the ban was poorly thought out, and didn’t last long. The outcry over the lack of sliced bread, a product Americans could just not live without, was tremendous. One distraught housewife wrote a letter of protest to the New York Times".

"I should like to let you see how important sliced bread is to the morale and saneness of a household. My husband and four children are all in a rush before, 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. They look less appetizing than the baker’s neat, even pieces. Haven’t the bakers already their bread-slicing machines and for thousands of loaves"?

 
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