The other day my friend Dewayne posted on FaceBook that he was wondering - What was the best thing BEFORE sliced bread?

I got to pondering that wondering of Dewayne’s, was he speaking about the pre-sliced and packaged bread of today or maybe just the first time we sliced bread. I thought I would explore both questions along with the phrase itself. The phrase "the greatest thing since sliced bread" and all of its variations are regularly used hyperbolic comments that usually refer to a new invention or innovation. I do not understand the seemingly arbitrary selection of sliced bread as the comparison item, or bench mark, that new products are graded against. It has been said that the phrase is the ultimate depiction of innovative achievement and American know-how but I am not sure I understand that. A bit of investigation and I found that Wonder Bread, the first mass marketer of sliced bread had a lot to do with the saying. Their marketing campaign launched in the 1930’s used the phrase. Wonder Bread was no new comer to innovative marketing strategies and the original company that produced the bread, the Taggart Baking Company debuted Wonder Bread after a lengthy “blind” promotional campaign that simply stated that a “Wonder” was coming on May 21st 1921. So in the 1930’s we thought sliced bread was here to stay – not so fast zippy. During WWII rationing of steel, which the bread slicers were made of, brought a quick end to sliced bread for the remainder of the war. Innovations such as the Sherman Tank and Liberty Ships were literally the greatest things since sliced bread, which was no longer being made.


While Wonder Bread was the first manufacturer to mass produce sliced bread it was not the first to package it. That distinction goes to a company that operated in the small Missouri town of Chillicothe that went by the name of the Chillicothe Baking Company. One of their early advertisements from mid 1928 announced that the greatest forward step in the baking Industry since bread was wrapped was the “Sliced Kleen Maid Bread." So it seemed that maybe the greatest thing before sliced bread was actually wrapped bread. I was shocked, little did I know that the bread industry had provided so many innovations to our world? Not much more investigation and I found this early boast was not without controversy. Battle Creek Michigan was the nation's cereal capital and also laid claims to being the home of sliced bread. However, throughout my investigation that claim seems, how shall I say it, half-baked. After some additional investigation on the actual bread slicing machines I found the Chillicothe Bakery had long been defunct and the machines had been junked. I needed more proof! There were stories from old timers who described how the bulky bread slicing machine raised and lowered its steel blades and stuffed the sliced loaves into wax-paper wrappers in one smooth operation. They could confirm that the machine used in the Chillicothe bakery was actually invented by an itinerant Iowa jeweler by the name of Otto Rohwedder. Although credited with the invention, Otto Rohwedder is all but lost to history, even the Smithsonian's American History Museum lacks information on the origins of sliced bread.


After researching a bit more, I began to realize that few inventions have so monumentally capitalized on the consumer's love of convenience. Were these the early threads of the beginnings of our “I want it now” and “I want it exactly the way I want it” attitude in this country? Think about it, sliced bread saved homemakers hours of drudgery. It created an entire industry in toasters, before sliced bread toasters were few and far between. The first toaster was invented in 1893 in Great Britain it was open faced and completely manual – you had to stand by and turn it off after it toasted one side at a time. It was not until the genius Charles Strite invented the modern timer, pop-up toaster in 1919 that the road was paved and all we needed was sliced bread. So was the greatest thing before sliced bread a toaster? With my head covered in sliced bread I got to thinking – what would a sandwich be without sliced bread? When John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich originated the name sandwich because he loved to eat beef between slices of toast, I was beginning to understand that sliced bread and toast have come a long way. The sandwich is proof again that necessity is the mother of invention, old John did not like getting beef juice all over the his playing cards, he loved cards and the bread allowed him have his dinner while enjoying a game of cards with his friends. You can imagine my complete and utter shock when I found out that multitasking is not a new concept either and was demonstrated by old John Montagu way back in the 1700’s.


So that kind of segues me into talking about before we started packaged it in the sliced form. I leanred that early cavemen made crude knives from pieces of obsidian which lead me to understand why we cannot really credit any single person with inventing the knife, or the slicing implement in this case. Besides that early cavemen from that era had not yet figured out that by grinding up grain and mixing some additional ingredients they could create bread to slice in the first place, hell he had his hands full with fire and was more worried about making his way to the top of the food chain. It would not be until we arrived, and firmly established ourselves I might add, at the top of the food chain that we could worry about such luxuries as bread period, let alone slicing it up. In prehistoric times knives of flintstone, shells, and bones helped folks kill and cut up animals for food and scrape their hides to make coverings that kept out the cold and rain, part of the path to the top of the food chain. The ancient Greeks and Romans made knives, and spoons for that matter, out of bronze. Some of these bronze implements had handles shaped like banisters. Others had plain handles with ends like the hoof of a deer. In the Middle Ages, Europeans made knife handles ending in a knob and later, in the 16th century, with handles ending in figures of saints or other religious figures. I soon found it was a lost cause trying to find when the first knife was put to use. It was a LONG time before we had bread to slice though so I will leave that at there.


The first evidence points to wheat being first grown in Mesopotamia and Egypt, the experts believe that it was likely that wheat was merely chewed. I am not sure when, or how for that matter why, someone thought – let me pulverize this grain and mix it with water and make a paste. I suspect it was an older fella who came up with that idea, after his teeth came out and he was not longer able to chew the grain. Then later some other person decided – hey lets throw this paste over a fire and they found that the paste hardened into a flat bread that kept for several days. Probably tasted like shit but it was chewable with no teeth and it could be kept for a couple of days before spoiling, this was probably critical as we had not yet shifted from hunter gatherers to settlers and farmers. How do you suppose that someone accidentally figured out that if yeast was added the bread actually rose. That accident happened a long time ago - In Egypt, around 1000 BC, inquiring minds isolated yeast and were able to introduce the culture directly to their breads, yep 1000 BC. Well once the power of yeast was unleased it did not take some miscreant alchemist long to come up with bread beer, which was developed around the same time. The bread was soaked in water and sweetened and the foamy liquor run off. Beer – it was as popular 3009 years ago as it is today. So maybe the greatest thing before sliced bread was actually beer. Now we are getting someplace, not really I quit drinking in 1989, but the story was getting good.


Well the ancient Greeks picked up the technology for making bread from the Egyptians, from there the art of bread making, and beer production, spread over the rest of Europe. Bread and wheat were especially important in Rome where it was thought more vital than meat. Bread was also a social indictor in Rome, the darker the bread, the lower the social station, that I found was because whiter flours were more expensive and harder for millers to adulterate with other products. That trend seems to be reversing in modern times, darker breads are more expensive and highly prized for their taste as well as their nutritional value. So after all that I realized that my friend Dewayne put me on a fools errand – there are so many things that were great before sliced bread and I have decided to call it quits on this quest.

What do you think it was??