Monday, July 7, 2025

Pre-sliced And Packaged

Image by rawpixel.com
If you're a sliced bread lover, today is a big day. According to Wikipedia, on July 7, 1928 the first sliced bread was sold by the Chillicothe Baking Company in Chillicothe, Missouri (a town about an hour northeast of Kansas City).

The story actually starts in 1912, when Otto Frederick Rohwedder of Davenport, Iowa built a prototype of a single loaf bread slicing machine. All of the paperwork was destroyed in a fire, and it took another 16 years for the machine to make its debut.

In 2019 Missouri state statute 9.240 designated July seventh of each year as "Missouri Sliced Bread Day", indicating that the citizens of this state are encouraged to participate in appropriate activities and events to commemorate the first sale of sliced bread on July 7, 1928, in Chillicothe, Missouri.

There's also a St. Louis sliced bread connection. Gustav Papendick, a St. Louis baker, bought the second bread slicing machine. He knew that sliced bread got stale faster than an uncut loaf, so he developed a way to keep a newly-sliced loaf aligned so it could easily be wrapped in wax paper.

Five years ago: [Not] Great Customer Service

6 comments:

  1. Who doesn't love sliced bread? -Christine cmlk79.blogspot .com

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  2. My day is complete now! Thanks, Kathy!

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  3. I read recently that Trump is mulling putting a new tax on sliced bread, to get people off their folk's couches and slicing their own bread.

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  4. I take a regular loaf of bread from the oven and ask them to cut it for me!!

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  5. I can just smell this bread right through the computer. We have stopped eating breads since Sam has been sick, but goodness it sure looks good.

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