Ever wonder what the best thing before sliced bread was? Thankfully, we don’t need to find out! The sliced pan – toasted, fried or raw - it is the backbone of school lunches, a home for our Tayto, a blanket to our piggies and our nation’s go-to food when a snowstorm hits. Many of us could not imagine our lives without the sliced pan, but like everything, it had to be invented by someone.
The first ever pre-sliced loaf of bread – the very first sliced pan – appeared on supermarket shelves in the US on 7th July 1928, branded: "Sliced Kleen Maid Bread”, and the rest, as they say, is history!
That person was Otto Frederick Rohwedder, a jeweler by trade. Otto invented the Rohwedder Bread Slicer in 1912; however, at the time bakers were skeptical. They worried that pre-slicing bread would shorten its shelf-life. To alleviate this worry, Rohwedder amended his Bread Slicer in 1928, so that it would wrap the bread in a thin layer of wax paper after slicing, to keep it fresh. Even still, Rohwedder had no luck finding support for his pre-sliced bread; until he travelled to Missouri, where he met with baker, Frank Bench, who decided to support Otto’s modified invention.
The first ever pre-sliced loaf of bread – the very first sliced pan – appeared on supermarket shelves in the US on 7th July 1928, branded: "Sliced Kleen Maid Bread”, and the rest, as they say, is history!
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