In the early 20th century, Americans were highly concerned with the purity of their food supply. In the case of bread, hand-kneading was suddenly seen as a possible source of contamination... Mass-produced bread, on the other hand, seemed safe. It was made in shining factories, mechanically mixed, government regulated. It was individually wrapped...
But factory breads were also incredibly soft... “Softness,” Borrow-Strain writes, “had become customers’ proxy for freshness, and savvy bakery scientists turned their minds to engineering even more squeezable loaves. As a result of the drive toward softer bread, industry observers noted that modern loaves had become almost impossible to slice neatly at home.” The solution had to be mechanical slicing.
Factory-sliced bread was born on July 6, 1928 at Missouri’s Chillicothe Baking Company. While retailers would slice bread at the point of sale, the idea of pre-sliced bread was a novelty... The bakery saw a 2,000 percent increase in sales, and mechanical slicing quickly swept the nation.
14 June 2012
Why Americans eat sliced bread
An explanation from the Smithsonian's Food and Think blog:
factory bread: the worst invention since.....
ReplyDeleteIt occurs to me that the bread may also appear much softer if it's sliced, depending on which way you squeeze it. If you're squeezing it from the sides then you're only squashing the slices you're directly in contact with, while with a whole loaf you're pulling in the surrounding bread as well.
ReplyDeleteIt's the ever repeating story of a people being scared/seduced by treacherous media into doing something stupid, like eating a tasteless, colourless, mushy starch-marshmallow and calling it bread.
ReplyDeleteAlso note how softness is used to fake freshness. This kind of fraud is a direct result of free (unregulated) enterprise.
North American 'floppy bread' has always been the hot topic of conversation with European friends... particularly those from Germany... who consistently launch into extensive diatribes decrying the complete lack of substance, texture, and taste of our store-bought factory-produced loaves, as compared to handmade bread (i.e. Schwarzbrot).
ReplyDeleteHowever, I normally counter that the one thing this sliced soft bread is good for is... toast!
Bryan, this is why in German grocery stores, you can buy packages of factory bread with American flags on them that are called "Toast Brot." I wondered why they call it this until I realized that toasting regular bakery German bread will make it almost impossible to bite into (but it's still really good, if you barely toast it).
ReplyDeleteI know these Germans you speak of who grab a factory American loaf and squish it into nothingness and laugh. How we judge bread: individual slices should stand up on their own. The preservative-free German bread in our kitchen goes bad (turns green) in 4 days. In America, my favorite bread (Orowheat 7 grain) stays amazingly soft and fresh for weeks.
~lytha in Germany
Du hast recht. Aber es ist nicht nur ein Deutsches Phänomen...! Mais, c'est la même pour les français!
ReplyDeleteAdditionally to being the second largest consumers of chocolate per capita, Germans have completely taken to American habits, in that people almost exclusively go shopping in cars, and thus shop less frequently buying less fresh, more durable, preservable food.
ReplyDeleteAlso more than half of the products contain sugar, or resembles snacks, or are ready made and thus are cheapest ingredients products, rather than healthy food. Obesity rates meanwhile are still rising, just saw this in yesterday's article:
http://www.thelocal.de/society/20120615-43161.html
When it comes to bread however the new trend is fresh baked bread from the food discounter, baked inside the shop, by regular clerks completely on demand, from factory made frozen and oven ready dough.
Yours truly,
25.7 BMI