i like my bread like i like my man, hot and fluffy......wait what?...

Sliced bread.

You’re the best thing since sliced bread is a super popular saying, yea I guess sliced bread is awesome, I wish however that not ALL white bread were sliced. Sometimes I want to be a hungry hungry hippo and have a huge slab of bread with butter or have a thick slice to make awesome French toast. Anyhow, I wondered how old sliced bread was and surprisingly it's not very old.

In the early 1900’s people bought giant loaves of bread, yummy white fluffy buttery bread and get this THEY SLICED IT THEMSELVES!.. omg what a travesty, you had to cut your own deliciously thick slices how inconvenient that you had to select your own thickness of bread instead of a preselected skinny slice, savages. Well thankfully all that changed. In 1912 Otto Frederick Rohwedder, from Davenport, Iowa created the first bread slicing machine. People were even dubious about using it because they said it would make the bread go stale faster. A lot of bakers were hesitant to use it and thought it would never catch on. Rohwedder then decided to wrap the bread in wax paper, thus preserving the freshness even when sliced, still haters gonna hate and no one was buying in on the idea.

One of the early bread slicing machines circa 1930.

Little did they know, one baker had faith in this contraption, Frank Bench of Missouri thought this was awesome and on July 7, 1928 “Sliced Kleen Maid Bread." Hit the stores all sliced and fancy. And no surprise he totally made tons of money.

Then in 1930 wonder started mass producing sliced loves and soon enough every home had sliced bread in their bread box…

Housewives everywhere rejoiced and thick sliced bread fanatics world wide were now saddened and felt like hungry hippos cause they had to pile two slices on each side of their sandwiches. But did you know that thickness of bread is different all over the world. In fact in England and Japan they sell "extra thick" "thick" "medium" or "thin"..... (clearly a sign im in the wrong country.) the U.S. only sells one size unless you have a specialty loaf called "texas toast" which is double the thickness of a regular loaf, and the reason I dont buy it because well its associated with texas and nothing awesome ever came from texas. Yea I went there.

So there you have it from incredulous bakers to hungry hippos. The next time someone tells you you’re the best thing since sliced bread, let them know it’s not all that awesome, get all offended and suggest that maybe if given the chance, you would have LOVED to choose the thickness of your slice… or just say thank you.

need to know more? Sliced bread