Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread

Bread is about 30,000 years old. Sliced bread is less than 100. What gives? Listen in to find out. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 0:39Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here sitting in for Dave. So this is an official bona fide short stuff.

• 0:47Speaker 02

  That's right. Big thanks to history of bread.com, history.com. Our old friends at howstuffworks.com and the surprisingly instructive gold medal bakery.com.

• 0:59Josh Clark?

  I also want to shout out mental floss and Zachary Crockett on priceonomics.

• 1:04Speaker 02

  Great, because this is about sliced bread.

• 1:08Speaker 02

  You've heard the term, of course, the best thing since sliced bread. And oddly enough, well, not oddly, but sliced bread has been around less than 100 years, even though bread has been around for tens of thousands of years.

• 1:21Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I think in either a bread episode or a beer episode, we explored whether or not bread was created to make beer portable or a beer starter portable. But regardless, it's been around for a very, very long time. And yet, what'd you say, 30,000 years?

• 1:39Speaker 02

  I said tens of thousands, but yeah, that's a little more specific.

• 1:42Josh Clark?

  Okay, let's say bread was invented 30,000 years ago. It took 29,900 years before this point for somebody to think of pre sliced bread, or if they thought of it to actually follow through with that idea. And we have a hero, a hero named Otto Frederick Rohiter to thank for that. We'll meet him in a minute.

• 2:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I mean, you can listen to our bread episode. We don't need to go over all that, but suffice it to say, for 29,900 years-ish, people were generally tearing off chunks of bread. That's where we get the term breaking bread. There were sandwiches. I believe the first, like, credit for the real sandwich goes to Rabbi Hillel the Elder, who put lamb and bitter herbs on, in between two pieces of matzo, the Hillel sandwich. And then in 1840, a woman, Miss Leslie, Eliza Leslie, published Directions for cookery, in which she talked about what's thought to believe be the, like, the first ham sandwich, where

• 2:49Speaker 02

  she talks about cutting slices of bread very neatly. So, people were slicing their bread at home. It's not like they were like, "I want to make a sandwich, but I just tear it off in these big chunks and I don't understand."

• 3:00Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 3:01Speaker 02

  People were home slicing bread to make sandwiches, but that all changed on July 7th, 1928, right?

• 3:08Josh Clark?

  Yeah, because that guy I mentioned before, Otto Friedrich Roveter, the father of sliced bread, he had been tinkering with this for well over a decade, right?

• 3:19Speaker 02

  Roveter!

• 3:20Josh Clark?

  He was a...

• 3:21Speaker 02

  It's gotta be German.

• 3:23Josh Clark?

  It has to be. Well, his name's Otto Friedrich first. I mean, those are your first two clues, and then they really kind of drive it home on the third name.

• 3:30Speaker 02

  Then auf Deutsch?

• 3:32Josh Clark?

  He, uh, no, he was...

• 3:35Speaker 02

  You're not gonna do it?

• 3:36Josh Clark?

  From, what, the Roveter?

• 3:38Speaker 02

  I just want you to say it German.

• 3:40Josh Clark?

  Otto Friedrich Roveter.

• 3:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, there you go.

• 3:44Josh Clark?

  I didn't even know I could roll my Rs.

• 3:46Speaker 02

  You're calling him Roveter.

• 3:47Josh Clark?

  Well, I'm, you know, from Georgia, in Ohio, in Florida.

• 3:52Speaker 02

  All right, all right.

• 3:54Josh Clark?

  So, anyway, OT, or wait, OFR.

• 3:57Speaker 02

  What's that?

• 4:00Josh Clark?

  It's his initials. I'm trying to think of something else to call him that you won't make fun of me for. How about Otto?

• 4:09Josh Clark?

  So Otto, he was an inventor and I don't, I didn't see anywhere where he got the idea to do this, but just suddenly sat up one day, he's like, sliced bread. We should make sliced bread. So you can just go buy, buy at the store, pre sliced bread. And he got to work making a machine all the way back in 1917. But you mentioned it wasn't until 1928 that people started being able to buy pre sliced bread at the store. And that's because he got pretty far, got a prototype developed, had all these blueprints for making this machine. And there was a fire at his office that just wiped everything out.

• 4:45Speaker 02

  That's right. It's very sad. And it took him a long time to get back, you know, up to speed. I do think we should point out that this guy was a jeweler. He was not in the food business at all. He had a ophthalmology degree, yet he became a jeweler and had three jewelry stores that he owned. But he wasn't inventor and he would sell those jewelry stores. And that's what financed his, I guess, just strange idea to slice and package bread.

• 5:15Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And I mean, think about how just normal that seems now. Just to imagine that somebody had to have that idea at one point. And then we know the person who did. His name is Otto. I just find that fascinating.

• 5:30Speaker 02

  That's right. Mr. Rohiter.

• 5:32Josh Clark?

  If you want to put it like that.

• 5:35Speaker 02

  Should we take a break?

• 5:36Josh Clark?

  Yes.

• 5:37Speaker 02

  All right. I'll be right back.

• 5:51Josh Clark?

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• 10:26Josh Clark?

  So Otto had that fire in 1917 and he kept working at it. And 11 years later, he had a working machine that was pumped by foot, I saw, like a sewing machine of the era. And it was two sets of very sharp blades, some going up, some going down at the same time. And a loaf of bread would come from a top, down a ramp, past the blades and come out the bottom of the machine, sliced, but kind of a mess. They were just kind of laying all over the place. A loafish shape, but really a pretty messy loafish shape.

• 11:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, they were half inch slices because he did a lot of research and came up with a half inch is sort of like the perfect uniform width for a piece of bread, for a sandwich or whatever else you want to do with it, I guess. And he sold that first slicer to a guy named, a friend of his, named Frank Bench, who was a baker in Missouri at a place called the Chillicothe Baking Company. And that was the first one sold. The second was, was sold to another baker named Gustav Papendick. And this is the guy who improved it. He was like, hey, you got these slices that are coming out, but they're all falling apart. He came up with a way to slice it where they stayed, you know, packaged together, they

• 11:43Speaker 02

  stayed fresher longer and they, it just made the, the wrapping process much easier. So he improved upon it.

• 11:48Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure. So two things. Frank Bench was a baker on the verge of bankruptcy and just decided to take a chance and pay his friend for this machine. And number two, the, before Gustav Papendick came along, Otto's solution to these floppy, flimsy, like falling apart loaves of bread was to stick a hat pin in them. And then part of the instruction was to take the hat pin out just far enough so that you could take some, however many slices you wanted from it and then push the hat pin back in. And everybody was like, that's a terrible idea. What else you got? And luckily Papendick was like, no, no, no, we'll have it wrapped so that by the time

• 12:30Josh Clark?

  it comes out of the slicer, none, this loaf isn't falling apart and it's wrapped for freshness. It was a great, great improvement because without it, sliced bread would have gone nowhere, basically.

• 12:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I wonder if Rovetter was like, have you seen a king cake? They got a freaking plastic baby in those things.

• 12:47Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 12:48Speaker 02

  It's like, you can deal with a hat pin.

• 12:50Josh Clark?

  Right. You're not going to choke on a hat pin, but 18 people a year choke on a king cake baby.

• 12:56Speaker 02

  Wouldn't surprise me. So, the reference, the first reference to sliced bread in print apparently was in 1928, when that local paper from Frank Bench's Bread Company there in Missouri, had an article that said sliced bread is made here. That was the headline. I'm sorry, it was an advertisement, sliced bread is made here. And they are, of course, the, the home of the original sliced bread there in Missouri, which is quite a claim to fame, I'm sure. But, when this stuff came out, it, it wasn't like, everyone was like, oh my god, this is the best thing since, you know, since whatever the previous best thing was. People are like, this is weird, because they had been slicing their own bread, they didn't know what to think about it.

• 13:38Speaker 02

  They had to convince, you know, people to get on board, to get bakeries on board. And who got on board was generally homemakers, which at the time was largely women. These women who were packing lunches for husbands and kids, they were like, this is incredible. You have no idea how much easier this is. And I don't have kids arguing about different sized slices. And Johnny's thing is bigger than me. And this sandwich looks janky because the bread slopes at the end. And I got a small piece and a big piece. And it's made everything quicker and streamlined my routine. And this is the, the new best thing.

• 14:15Josh Clark?

  Right. And to help them out, I think Wonder Bread first came out. It was, I think, the first sliced bread nationally available, widely available. And it became the, the most popular. And originally it was called Wonder Cut, because it came pre-sliced and they shortened it to Wonder Bread. But I was like, seriously, how much of a time saver is this? And then I read a, a quote from a woman who was... Upset, we'll talk about why she was upset in a minute. But she makes a really good case that like, if you're having to slap together sandwiches really quickly for your family's lunches before they go out the door. And you're also cutting bread to make toast for them at the same time.

• 14:58Josh Clark?

  Like you might have to slice 30 slices of bread really quick. And that's actually kind of time consuming. So if you can buy pre sliced bread, that's going to save you some time and effort. And it actually is worth it. So I finally wrapped my head around how much of a time saver sliced bread actually is.

• 15:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, I got six kids. I got a husband. I got a divorced neighbor who doesn't understand how to make a sandwich.

• 15:22Josh Clark?

  Art.

• 15:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, Art's divorced. He doesn't know how to make a sandwich. Everyone wants toast. Everyone wants sandwiches. You can't take this away from us.

• 15:31Josh Clark?

  No, and they tried to, didn't they?

• 15:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, didn't the government step in and literally try to stop sliced bread?

• 15:37Josh Clark?

  Yes. So as part of the wartime conservation in the United States for World War Two, Claude R. Wickard, who was the US Food Administrator.

• 15:49Speaker 02

  I think it's Wickard.

• 15:51Speaker 02

  Sorry.

• 15:52Josh Clark?

  You're probably right, but I'm going to call him Claude Wickard.

• 15:58Josh Clark?

  He ordered a ban on sliced bread in particular, not bread, not anything else, just sliced bread. And his reasoning was you have to use thicker wax paper to keep pre sliced bread fresh because there's a lot of holes in it now. There's a lot of extra surface area to go stale. So that means you're using more paraffin. And God knows what else they were trying to use paraffin for, probably waterproofing stuff, like clothing and things like that at the time.

• 16:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:26Josh Clark?

  So they needed the paraffin. And then at the same time, they're also like, the price of grain is about to go up and we don't want bakers to be able to use sliced bread prices, which is more expensive, to hide passing on higher grain prices. So we're just going to say you can't have sliced bread. And Claude Wickard walked away whistling and like dusting his hands off. And he thought that was it. And he ran into America's homemakers who surged up like a tidal wave of angry people wearing aprons. It came after him and he ended up backing down pretty quick.

• 17:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, he put on his canvas wax, his wax canvas field jacket.

• 17:08Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 17:09Speaker 02

  And he marched out of the room.

• 17:10Josh Clark?

  His veal beckett.

• 17:13Speaker 02

  Thank you for getting on board.

• 17:16Speaker 02

  So back to Roavetta. He sold his patent rights to a company called the Micro Westo Company in Iowa. I think we didn't mention he was, I think he was from Iowa, right?

• 17:27Josh Clark?

  Davenport.

• 17:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. And he actually was one of those deals where you sell the patent rights, but then you come on board as a sort of spokesman and salesperson. So he led the Roavetta Bakery Machine Division, selling these things to more and more bakeries. But he never, he never became like some huge name. I think there are many, many more inventors of very common items that are much more well-known. He lived a very quiet life in Louisiana. And I think he retired in 71 and passed away at, what, close to 80?

• 18:02Josh Clark?

  His age was close to 80.

• 18:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, as opposed to what?

• 18:07Josh Clark?

  Dying near 1980.

• 18:09Speaker 02

  Oh, OK, I got you, yeah.

• 18:10Josh Clark?

  Close to 80.

• 18:12Speaker 02

  I don't know what year it was, though. Do you know?

• 18:14Josh Clark?

  I don't, as a matter of fact, but we could kind of guess. He's, he lived, he was, oh, 1960. There it is, right there. I was gonna do some math, luckily I was bailed out at the last minute.

• 18:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, so there you have it. What's sliced bread, right?

• 18:29Josh Clark?

  Yeah, well, there's one other thing. There's a extra happy end to this story. That guy Frank Bench, the nearly bankrupt baker who took a chance on his friend Otto and his new machine. His sales increased by 2,000% when he started selling sliced bread, and he was saved.

• 18:49Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 18:49Josh Clark?

  Yep, pretty cool.

• 18:51Speaker 02

  That's amazing. I think it's pronounced Bench.

• 18:54Josh Clark?

  I hope, I really hope that Otto's like great grandson Tim Reisen, and he's like, it's Roavetta.

• 19:01Speaker 02

  Well, it may have been, since they were in Iowa. A lot of people, you know, change their very German or French or whatever pronounced names to more American sounding.

• 19:09Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 19:11Speaker 02

  Like Clark. What was Clark?

• 19:13Josh Clark?

  Flark?

• 19:16Josh Clark?

  Flark?

• 19:16Speaker 02

  I think Bryant was probably O'Brien at some point.

• 19:19Josh Clark?

  No, Clark was Clark. It's a derivative of clerk, so I come from a long line of pencil pushers.

• 19:25Speaker 02

  Oh, how weirdly inappropriate.

• 19:27Josh Clark?

  I agree. I'm glad you said that. Thank you.

• 19:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:32Josh Clark?

  I guess short stuff's out.

• 19:37Speaker 06

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