Нарезной хлеб: история и изобретение

Loaf of bread that has been sliced with a machine

Sliced bread is a loaf of bread that has been sliced with a machine and packaged for convenience, as opposed to the consumer cutting it with a knife. It was first sold in 1928, advertised as "the greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped". By 1933, around 80% of bread sold in the US was pre sliced, leading to the popular idiom "greatest thing since sliced bread".

Otto Frederick Rohwedder of Davenport, Iowa, United States, invented the first single loaf bread slicing machine. A prototype he built in 1912 was destroyed in a fire, and it was not until 1928 that Rohwedder had a fully working machine ready. The first commercial use of the machine was by the Chillicothe Baking Company of Chillicothe, Missouri, who sold their first slices on July 7, 1928. Their product, "Kleen Maid Sliced Bread", proved to be a success. Battle Creek, Michigan, has a competing claim as the first city to sell bread sliced by Rohwedder's machine; however, historians have produced no documentation backing up Battle Creek's claim. The bread was advertised as "the greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped". St. Louis baker Gustav Papendick bought Rohwedder's second bread slicer and set out to improve it by devising a way to keep the slices together at least long enough to allow the loaves to be wrapped. W. E. Long, who promoted the Holsum Bread brand, used by various independent bakers around the country, pioneered and promoted the packaging of sliced bread, beginning in 1928. In 1930, Wonder Bread, first sold in 1925, started marketing sliced bread nationwide. In the United Kingdom, the first slicing and wrapping machine was installed in the Wonderloaf Bakery in Tottenham, London, in 1937. By the 1950s around 80% of bread sold in Britain was pre sliced.

The phrase "the greatest thing since sliced bread" is a common idiom used to praise an invention or development. A writer for The Kansas City Star wrote that "the phrase is the ultimate depiction of innovative achievement and American know how." In 1933, an advertisement for a bread offering thick and thin slices in the same loaf called it "the first improvement since sliced bread". In 1940, a package of bread consisting of two wrapped sliced half loaves was advertised as the "greatest convenience since sliced bread".