We call it deckel or just decke. I think it is a Yiddish for lid or roof. I think I learned it from my wife. Before that I would have called it the end slice, although heel is also familiar.
Same here, never heard it called the “heel” before.
So you eat bread instead of brisket?
I’ve always called those slices the crust.
Then what do you call the brown chewy edge of a slice of bread?
That’s the crust as well. Contextual clues prevent any misunderstanding.
It’s a heel for me, and I live in Ireland, so I am surprised to discover that it is an American usage.
I looked it up in the OED and the relevant entry says “The crust at the bottom (also, sometimes, the top) of a loaf; the rind of a cheese”.
Not the crust at the two ends of a rectangular loaf, which is how I understand the word.
In Polish that part of the bread is called przylepka or kromka.
To follow up: another Polish-speaker I asked insisted that it is either pietka (pronounced as the previous posters indicated) or, more colloquially, “dupka” (little butt).
This brings up fond memories. My mom always called it the “loaf ass”.
Mom was a real card. She used to think loaves of bread were supposed to do chores! She’d joke, saying things like, “that loaf ass didn’t mow the grass like he was supposed to!”
[scratches head]hmm[/scratches head]
…hey, wait a minute; I was the one who was supposed to mow the lawn?!?
Some wag recently asked Brennan’s to release a loaf that was all heel. A good sport in their marketing department sent them a one-off loaf of heels.
My dad calls it “pretka” because he says his Czech/Bohemian grandma called it that.
He could very well be pronouncing it wrong, though.
I keep thinking the bolded portion is supposed to be a shaggy-dog pun that I’m just not getting. 
</hijack>
A quite common term for this in the UK is the ‘knobby’ or ‘nobby’. Surprised no-one else has mentioned this yet.
I’ve always called it the crust. I was an adult before I heard the term “heel” in this context.
Nope, just a load of heels packaged together like a normal sliced pan.
Today, I call it the heel.
When I was a lad, my mother, rather than try to cajole one of her brood into eating what we then called “the crust,” would toss both of them into a brown paper shopping bag. On the first Saturday morning after the bag was full of stale bread crusts, out would come the Dutch Oven. She’d break up the pieces, and cook them with milk, sugar, vanilla extract, and raisins.
THAT, my friends, is what “comfort food” means, to a kid. Yum! 
I know this is an oldish thread but while bread nomenclature is again being discussed I got to wondering what other names there might be for what we used to call ‘The Sweet Piece’ or ‘Baker’s Kiss’.
The (two) pieces I refer to were right in the middle of those old-fashioned ‘two-hump’ loaves; the part where the loaf tore in two. They had a completely different texture to any ordinary slice of bread and we used to fight to get them as kids.
Also, in New Zealand the ends were pretty much universally called ‘crusts’.
When my brother and sister and I were kids we’d call it the “peep-full.”
My dad who was of Polish decent always called it the krumka.