A Deeper Look Into Sliced Bread

As I prepared my sandwich for work this morning, a quote on the bag perked my attention. "What was the best thing before sliced bread?". Trader Joes is historical for these little "haha's" on their products, but for whatever reasons, this one caused my early morning speculation to kick into over drive.

Before deciding what the best thing was before sliced bread, I had to figure out a little bit of history regarding sliced bread which I share with you now. As far as I can tell, sliced bread was the conception of Otto Frederick Rohwedder of Davenport, Iowa. Evidently he made a prototype in 1912 for a whole loaf bread slicer. This prototype burned in a fire and it wasn't until 1928 that he had finally created a working model. A few other guys got into the business shortly after and with better success. The first loaf of bread was sliced on July 7, 1928 in Battle Creek, Michigan (which claims this achievement to this day) and Wonderbread would be the first company to commercialize sliced bread in 1930 using a slicing machine that sliced and wrapped.

Sliced bread was originally marketed as "the greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped."

In 1943 bread slicing was banned by the US Government in order to combat rising flour costs and to prevent bread from drying out too quickly (can't have waste after all). The ban only lasted about three months...We can thank the French for a successful protest! (In case you forgot, France and the US were allies during this time).

Well, as noted above, wrapped bread was the greatest thing since sliced bread. But that seems to be a lame precursor to one of our greatest hyperbolic phrases.

Of course there are so many stellar achievements that must be considered like anti-septics, horse drawn coaches, spiral barrels on rifles (a Civil War ooolala), the printing press, Bibles in the vernacular, submarines (I'm thinking about the Civil War ones), trains, crude oil drills, you're getting the point.

Since bread is a food, and slicing bread is to increase convenience, I have chosen to focus on a food item that was convenient before sliced or wrapped bread to address the original question of this post.

I have chosen, beyond a reasonable doubt: Beer.

Beer has been tracked back to 9000 BC in the writings of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. Chemical evidence of beer goes back to 3100 BC in what would become Western Iran, and Germanic and Celtic tribes in 3000BC. This beer wasn't "normal beer" however. It was brewed with fruits, and cereal grains, and random wild flowers and berries. Beer as we appreciate it was best tracked down to 822AD and 1607AD when hops became the wonder weed of beer making. Before the Industrial Revolution, beer was made in small batches in monasteries and local breweries. After the Industrial Revolution, beer was made on a commercial level (don't' worry "micro brewing" will return as a phenomenon of the 1990's-2000's). By the end of the 1800's, beer had become a precise art due to the advent of thermometers and hydrometers which enabled consistent and quality results.

How great is this? A bread product being the best thing since sliced bread! Bread was, and forever will be, a staple in the human diet. How appropriate that it should expand upon itself. Beer has been used in substitute for water in Europe (historically) and in Mexico (currently) and attracts hundreds of billions of dollars in world sales. That's the power of bread man.

The next time you grab for that turkey sandwich, grab yourself a beer as well. You will experience a jubilee of historical awareness as you munch and savor the flavors of history's good fortune. Don't believe me? Try a FatTire. That stuff is bread in a bottle.



(Thank you wikipedia for your support in this speculation.)