Sliced Bread     1928

We've all heard the expression, "it's the greatest thing since sliced bread," but have you ever wondered who invented sliced bread? The first bread was probably made around 12,000 years ago. Bread dough was likely made by mixing crushed grain and water. Our pre-historic ancestors probably cooked the bread by covering the dough with hot ashes. This ancient bread was probably tough, and flat. It likely looked something like the pita bread we eat today. Archeologists believe Egyptians discovered that if you let the dough ferment, gases will build up inside the loaf, and cause the bread to rise when it was baked. The result was a light, expanded loaf. Otto Frederick Rohwedder is considered the father of sliced bread. He started working on a bread slicer in 1912. When Rohwedder took his idea to bakers, they told him that pre-cut loaves would quicky go stale. Rohwedder tried find ways to keep the bread from going stale. Among his inventions was a device that would hold the slices of bread together with hat pins. Unfortunately, the pins kept falling out. In 1928 Rohwedder's designed a machine that would slice and wrap bread. The wrapper would keep in the bread's moisture and keep it from going stale. Later that year, a bakery in Battle Creek, Michigan, used Rohwedder's invention and began making and selling pre-cut loaves. Today, sliced bread can be found in almost every home across Canada.