I just want to know what the best thing was before sliced bread so having said this I had to go and learn a little about bread first.
Humans have been making bread for ten to twelve thousand years, the Egyptians were the first to produce leavened or raised breads and the workers who built the pyramids were paid with it. Maybe the line “give us our daily bread” in the Lord’s prayer is like saying I hope I don’t get laid off.
The first bakers guilds were formed in Rome in 150 B.C.
After the bread trials of 1266 bakers in England were required to mark their bread so that non-conforming loaves could be traced back to their maker. These were some of the earliest known trademarks. From 1202 on a baker could be prosecuted for producing non-standard or underweight bread.
Yeast was identified as a leavening agent in the 1800’s although the Greeks and Romans had been producing raised breads for a few millenia.
The commercial bread slicer was invented in 1928 and was followed quickly by the invention of the automatic toaster. Toast consumption hit new heights.
In 1943 the department of Agriculture banned the sale of sliced bread in an effort to reduce prices during wartime rationing.
In 1997, Americans ate an average of 150 pounds of wheat flour although this number was as high as 210 pounds a year in 1910.
Since bread is pretty useless unless you slice it we could assume that bread has always been sliced. Perhaps there was nothing before bread be it sliced or not…
Some other questions running through my mind right now are:
Why would you flog a dead horse?
What appeared above people’s heads before light bulbs were invented?