The “Pop-Up” Toaster Was Invented Before The Bread Slicer

On November 17, homes will fill with warm, comforting aromas reminding us to slow down and enjoy National Homemade Bread Day.

• 2650 BC – Archaeologists found bas-reliefs, dating at least this far back, of Egyptians harvesting grain, likely for bread.
• 79 AD – ​Mount Vesuvius erupted, preserving both the Roman city of Pompeii, which had 33 bakeries, and its bakery of Modestus.
• 1300 AD – The writings of Indo-Persian poet Amir Kushrau were recorded history’s first reference to bread.
• 16th Century – The distinction of “upper crust” comes from the 1600s. When the bread was made in stone ovens the bottoms would become dirty from ash and soot. If you were wealthy you cut the bottom crust off and just ate the “upper crust” part of the bread. – Source
• 1921 – The Toastmaster pop-up bread toaster was invented by Charles P. Strite in 1919 and manufactured in Minneapolis by the Waters-Genter Company in 1921.
  • The automatic pop-up bread toaster was patented before the bread-slicing machine.
• 1928 – ​Otto Frederick Rohwedder invented a machine to slice bread.
• 1943 – Pre-sliced bread was briefly banned in the United States in 1943 as a wartime conservation effort.
• 1952 – ​Comedian Red Skelton coined this phrase during a newspaper interview with the Salisbury Times: “Don’t worry about television. It’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.”
• 1980s – Ciabatta is not a traditional Italian bread, it was invented in the 1980s as a response to the popularity of baguettes. – Source
• It takes 9 seconds for a combine to harvest enough wheat to make about 70 loaves of bread.
• Each American consumes, on average, 53 pounds of bread per year.
• An average slice of packaged bread contains only 1 gram of fat and 75 to 80 calories.
• Bread, in all its various forms, is the most widely consumed food in the world.
• Bread is closely tied to religious expression and communion. Hot cross buns commemorate Lent and Good Friday, Greek Easter breads are set with eggs dyed red to denote the blood of Christ, and Jewish families celebrate the coming of the Sabbath on Friday evening with challah.
• Napoleon gave a common bread its name when he demanded a loaf of dark rye bread for his horse during the Prussian campaign. “Pain pour Nicole,” he ordered, which meant “Bread for Nicole,” his horse. To Germanic ears, the request sounded like “pumpernickel,” which is the term we use today for this traditional loaf.
• In Britain, the ceremony of First Footing is traditionally observed in the early hours of New Year’s Day. A piece of bread is left outside a door, with a piece of coal and a silver coin, and is supposed to bring you food, warmth, and riches in the year ahead.
• Scandinavian traditions hold that if a boy and girl eat from the same loaf, they are bound to fall in love.
• In Russia, bread (and salt) are symbols of welcome.
• Superstition says it is bad luck to turn a loaf of bread upside down or cut an unbaked loaf.
• Legend has it that whoever eats the last piece of bread has to kiss the cook.
• The distinction of “upper crust” comes from the 1600s. When the bread was made in stone ovens the bottoms would become dirty from ash and soot. If you were wealthy you cut the bottom crust off and just ate the “upper crust” part of the bread. – Source
• Ancient Egyptians used moldy bread as a treatment for infected burn wounds, possibly already utilizing the antibiotic effects of molds accidentally discovered by Alexander Fleming. – Source
• Before the Eraser was invented people used soft bread crumbs to erase pencil marks. – Source
• In France, by law, a bakery has to make all the bread it sells from scratch to have the right to be called a bakery. – Source
• Nearly all the bread clips, those flat, U-shaped pieces of plastic are produced by one family-owned company in Yakima, Washington. The first one was carved from a credit card, the company exports billions a year, and the Kwik Lok Corporation has an almost complete monopoly. – Source
• A nearly 2,000-year-old loaf of bread was found during excavations in Herculaneum, and The British Museum has recreated the recipe. – Source
• Bread becomes sweeter the longer you chew as your saliva starts to break down starch into sugars. – Source
• When buttered bread is dropped from a table, there’s an 80% it will fall butter side down. This is because an average slice of buttered bread falling will complete a full turn in approx. 8 feet. – Source
• Bread was so important to the Egyptian way of life that it was used as a type of currency. They revered it so much they would often place it in the tombs of their dead.
• Bakers used to be fined if their loaves were underweight so they added an extra loaf to every dozen, hence the term “Baker’s Dozen.”
• Bread appears 360 times in the Bible (KJV). 280 times in the Old Testament and 80 times in the New Testament.
• While bread has been used since the 17th century to clean the frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, restorationists found that Wonder Bread, and its spongy texture, is a remarkably efficient tool for cleaning Michelangelo’s “Creation of Adam.”
• Within five years of the invention of the machine for making sliced bread, 80% of bread sold in the USA was sliced.
• In medieval times bread was used as an absorbent plate. It was called a trencher. After the meal trencher could then be eaten, given to the poor or fed to the dogs. There is a theory that a pizza comes from a trencher.
• White bread was the preferred bread of the rich before it was discovered that it had less nutritional value than dark bread.
• Old wives’ tales tell that eating the bread crust makes a person’s hair curlier.
• The inner part of the bread encased by the crust is called the “crumb”, hence why small bits of this part of the bread are called crumbs.

Sources:

National Day Calendar

Mobile-Cuisine

Kickass Facts

History of Bread

National Today