Profile America: Cutting Bread Fine

Washington / DC. (gov) When something is proclaimed the best thing since sliced bread, that praise doesn’t encompass as much time as one might think. Sliced bread, wrapped for sale in wax paper, first appeared on store shelves in July 1928 in Chillicothe, Missouri. The Chillicothe Baking Company’s innovation of uniform, pre-sliced bread loaves remained local for a short while. By the 1930s, the obvious convenience of satisfactory sliced bread spread the practice nationally. In large part, this was due to the Wonder Bread brand, founded in 1921, adopting the automatic slicer. There are some 2’800 commercial bakeries across the U.S., employing over 123’000 workers. These establishments make a lot of dough: over 31 billion USD per year – according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Profile America is in its 20th year as a public service of the Bureau.