Showing posts with label Chillicothe Baking Company. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chillicothe Baking Company. Show all posts

Sep 7, 2012

Automatic Bread Slicer

As long as we are talking of bread slicing, The world’s first automatic bread slicer was invented by Otto Frederick Rohwedder in Davenport, Iowa. He first built a prototype of his bread slicer in 1912. Unfortunately, his blueprints and machine were destroyed in a fire in 1917. It took him until 1927 to re-build the machine and produce a model ready to use in an actual bakery.

The first pre-sliced loaf of bread using his machine, was sold on July 7, 1928. A friend of Rohwedders installed a bread slicing machine  at the Chillicothe Baking Company in Missouri. Sliced bread sales skyrocketed.

Pre-sliced bread became a national hit thanks to Wonder Bread, then owned by Continental Baking, who began commercially producing the pre-sliced bread in 1930 using a modified version of Rohwedder’s machine. Crumb is a term bakers use to define the part of bread inside the crust. Unrelated, Jackie Gleason called his drinking buddies crumb bums.