The History of Sliced Bread

It’s the best thing since…well, you know how the saying goes! Sliced bread was first manufactured on July 6, 1928 at Frank Bench’s Chillicothe Baking Company in Chillicothe, Missouri using a machine invented by Otto Rohwedder. It was well-received by the public, and plenty of research went into the process of perfecting sliced bread. It was determined that the ideal thickness of each slice was slightly less than half an inch. Sliced bread was also made to be softer than homemade loaves or bakery bread – this was purposeful, since the public associated “squeezable softness” with freshness. Wonder Bread was one of the first brands to distribute sliced bread and it is still available on grocery store shelves today. The only time that sliced bread hasn’t been available to the American public was during World War II, when the government banned factory-sliced bread in order to help conserve supplies, such as the paper used to wrap each loaf for freshness. But its popularity quickly rebounded once wartime bans were lifted and sliced bread remains an American staple to this day.