Top facts about bread that you never knew

Sliced bread was first introduced to the public in 1928

On July 7, 1928, sliced bread was first put on sale to the public by the by the Chillicothe Baking Company of Chillicothe, Missouri, USA.

1. The produce was called Kleen Maid Sliced Bread and used a slicing machine invented by Otto Frederick Rohwedder of Iowa. 

2. It was advertised as “the greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped”. 

3. That advertising slogan is thought to have given rise to the phrase “best thing since sliced bread”. 

4. Rohwedder had built a prototype of his breadslicer in 1912 but it was destroyed in a fire in 1917.

Coincidentally, July 7, 1928 was his 48th birthday. 

5. In 1943, the US imposed a ban on sliced bread as a wartime conservation measure. The ban was rescinded after only seven weeks.

6. The European Patent Office lists 344 patents whose titles include “sliced bread” or “bread slicer”. 

7. In the UK, men eat about 113 grams (4oz) of bread a day and for women it’s 76 grams (2.7oz). 

8. In the UK, 60 per cent of flour is used to make bread but 32 per cent of bread is thrown away. 

9. The record for the longest loaf of bread is 1,211.6m (3,975ft 0.7in) set in Portugal in 2005. 

10. The Ancient Egyptians used to pay workers in bread and beer but the use of “dough” in English as slang for “money” dates back only to 1851.