Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread

Episode Date: January 22, 2025

Bread is about 30,000 years old. Sliced bread is less than 100. What gives? Listen in to find out.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

John Stewart is back in the host chair at The Daily Show, which means he's also back in our ears on The Daily Show Ears Edition podcast. Join late night legend John Stewart and the best news team for today's biggest headlines, exclusive extended interviews and more. Now this is a second term we can all get behind. Listen to The Daily Show Ears Edition on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, and welcome to The Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here sitting in for Dave. So this is an official bona fide short stuff. That's right. Big thanks to historyofbread.com, history.com, our old friends at howstuffworks.com, and the surprisingly instructive goldmetalbakery.com. I also want to shout out Mental Floss and Zachary Crockett on Price Anomics. Great, because this is about sliced bread. You've heard the term, of course, the best thing since sliced bread. And oddly enough, well, not oddly, but sliced bread has been around less than 100 years,

even though bread has been around for tens of thousands of years. Yeah, I think in either a bread episode or a beer episode, we explored whether or not bread was created to make beer portable, a beer starter portable. But regardless, it's been around for a very, very long time, and yet, what'd you say, 30,000 years? I said tens of thousands, but yeah, that's a little more specific. Okay, let's say bread was invented 30,000 years ago. It took 29,900 years before this point

for somebody to think of pre-sliced bread or if they thought of it to actually follow through with that idea. And we have a hero, a hero named Otto Frederick Rohwetter to thank for that. We'll meet him in a minute. Yeah. So, I mean, you can listen to our bread episode. We don't need to go over all that, but suffice it to say for 29,900 years-ish, people were generally tearing off chunks of bread. That's where we get the term breaking bread.

There were sandwiches. I believe the first credit for the real sandwich goes to Rabbi Hillel the Elder, who put lamb and bitter herbs in between two pieces of matzo, the Hillel sandwich. And then in 1840, a woman, Ms. Leslie, Eliza Leslie, published Directions for Cookery, in which she talked about what's thought to believe be like the first ham sandwich, where she talks about cutting slices of bread very neatly. So people were slicing of bread very neatly. So people

were slicing their bread at home. It's not like they were like, I want to make a sandwich but I just tear it off in these big chunks and I don't understand. People were home slicing bread to make sandwiches, but that all changed on July 7th, 1928, right? Yeah, because that guy I mentioned before, Otto Frederick Röweter, the father of sliced bread, he had been tinkering with this for well over a decade, right? Röweter! He was a, he was a... It's gotta be German.

It has to be. Well, his name's Otto Frederick first. I mean, those are your first two clues. And then they really kind of drive it home on the third name. Then auf Deutsch? He, uh... No, he was from...

You're not gonna do it? What, the Röver? I just want you to say it in German. Otto Friedrich Röver. Yeah, there you go. I don't even know I could roll my Rs. You're calling him Röver. Well, I'm, you know, from Georgia, in Ohio, in Florida.

All right. All right. So, anyway, O-T, or wait, O-F-R. What's that? It's his initials. I'm trying to think of something else to call him that you won't make fun of me for. How about Otto? So, Otto, he was an inventor, and I didn't see anywhere where he got the idea to do this, but just suddenly sat up one day and he's like, slice bread. We should make sliced bread so you can just go buy at the store pre-sliced bread.

And he got to work making a machine all the way back in 1917. But you mentioned it wasn't until 1928 that people started being able to buy pre-sliced bread at the store. And that's because he got pretty far, got a prototype developed, had all these blueprints for making this machine, and there was a fire at his office that just wiped everything out. That's right. It's very sad. And it took him a long time to get back up to speed. I do think we should point out that this guy was a jeweler.

He was not in the food business at all. He had an ophthalmology degree, yet he became a jeweler and had three jewelry stores that he owned. But he was an inventor and he would sell those jewelry stores and that's what financed his, I guess, just strange idea to slice and package bread. Yeah, and I mean, think about how just normal that seems now. Just to imagine that somebody had to have that idea at one point and then we know the person who did.

His name is Otto. I just find that fascinating. That's right, Mr. Rowitter. If you want to put it like that. Should we take a break? Yes. All right. I'll be right back. Here at LifeKit, NPR's self-help podcast, we love the idea of helping you make meaningful lifestyle changes. Our policy is to never be too punishing on yourself or too grand in your goals, which

is why we've got shows on how to make little nudges to your behavior and create habits that stick. Listen to the LifeKit podcast on iHeartRadio. hilarious satirical takes on entertainment, politics, sports, and more from John and the team of correspondents and contributors. The podcast also has content you can't get anywhere else, like extended interviews and a roundup of the weekly headlines. Listen to The Daily Show, Ears Edition on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Stuff you should know. Stuff you should know. So Otto had that fire in 1917 and he kept working at it and 11 years later he had a working machine that was pumped by foot, I saw, like a sewing machine of the era. And it was two sets of very sharp blades, some going up, some going down at the same time, and a loaf of bread would come from a top down a ramp,

pass the blades and come out the bottom of the machine, sliced, but kind of a mess. They were just kind of laying all over the place in a low fish shape, but really a pretty messy low fish shape. Yeah, they were half inch slices because he did a lot of research and came up with a half inch is sort of like the perfect uniform width for a piece of bread for a sandwich or whatever else you want to do with it, I guess. Yeah.

And he sold that first slicer to a guy named, a friend of bread for a sandwich or whatever else you want to do with it, I guess. Yeah. And he sold that first slicer to a guy named, a friend of his named Frank Bench, who was a baker in Missouri at a place called the Chillicothe Baking Company. And that was the first one sold. The second was sold to another baker named Gustav Papendik. And this is the guy who improved it. He was like, hey, you got these slices that are coming out, but they're all falling apart. He came up with a way to slice it where they stayed,

you know, packaged together, they stayed fresher longer, and it just made the wrapping process much easier. So he improved upon it. Yeah, for sure. So two things. Frank Bench was a baker on the verge of bankruptcy and just decided to take a chance and pay his friend for this machine. And number two, before Gustav Papendick came along, Otto's solution to these floppy, flimsy like falling apart loaves of bread was to stick a hatpin in them. So, the idea was, you know, the the the the the

the the the the the the the the

the the the the the the the the

the the the the the was like, no, no, no, we'll have it wrapped so that by the time it comes out of the slicer, this loaf isn't falling apart and it's wrapped for freshness. It was a great, great improvement because without it, sliced bread would have gone nowhere basically. Yeah, I wonder if Rovetter was like, have you seen a king cake? They got a freaking plastic baby in those things. Right. It's like, you can deal with a hat pin.

Right, you're not gonna choke on a hat pin, but 18 people a year choke on a king cake, baby. It wouldn't surprise me. So the first reference to sliced bread imprint apparently was in 1928 when that local paper from Frank Bench's bread company there in Missouri had an article that said sliced bread is made here. That was the headline. I'm sorry, it was an advertisement, sliced bread is made here.

And they are, of course, the home of the original sliced bread there in Missouri, which is quite a claim to fame, I'm sure. But when this stuff came out, it wasn't like everyone was like, oh my god, this is the best thing since, you know, since whatever the previous best thing was. People are like, this is weird, because they had been slicing their own bread, they didn't know what to think about it, they had to convince people to get on board, to get bakeries on board. And who got on board was generally homemakers, which at the time was largely women. These women

who were packing lunches for husbands and kids, they were like, this is incredible. You have no idea how much easier this is. And I don't have kids arguing about different size slices. And Johnny's thing is bigger than me and this sandwich looks janky because the bread slopes at the end and I got a small piece and a big piece. And it's made everything quicker and streamlined my routine and this is the the new best thing. Right and to help them out I think Wonder Bread first came out. It was I think the

first sliced bread nationally available or widely available and it became the the most popular and originally was called Wonder Cut because it came pre-sliced and they shortened it to Wonder Bread. But I was like, seriously, how much of a time saver is this? And then I read a quote from a woman who was upset. We'll talk about why she was upset in a minute. But she makes a really good case that like, if you're having to slap together sandwiches really quickly for your family's lunches before they go out the door, and you're also cutting bread to make toast for them

at the same time, like you might have to slice 30 slices of bread really quick, and that's actually kind of time consuming, so if you can buy pre-sliced bread, that's gonna save you some time and effort, and it actually is worth it. So I finally wrap my head around how much of a time saver sliced it actually is worth it. So I finally wrap my head around how much of a time saver sliced bread actually is.

Yeah, I got six kids, I got a husband, I got a divorced neighbor who doesn't understand how to make a sandwich. Art. Yeah, Art's divorced. He doesn't know how to make a sandwich. Everyone wants toast, everyone wants sandwiches. You can't take this away from us. No, and they tried to, didn't they? Yeah, I mean, didn't the government step in and literally try to stop sliced bread? Yes. So as part of the wartime conservation in the United States for World War II,

Claude R. Wickard, who was the U.S. Food Administrator... I think it's Vickard. Sorry. You're probably right, but I'm going to call him Claude Wickard. He ordered a ban on sliced bread in particular. Not bread, not anything else, just sliced bread. And his reasoning was you have to use thicker wax paper to keep pre-sliced bread fresh because there's a lot of holes in it now. There's a lot of extra surface area to go stale. So that means you're using more

paraffin. And God knows what else they were trying to use paraffin for. Probably waterproofing stuff like clothing and things like that at the time. Yeah. So they needed the paraffin. And then at the same time they're also like the price of grain is about to go up and we don't want bakers to be able to use sliced bread prices, which is more expensive, to hide passing on higher grain prices. So we're just gonna say you can't have sliced bread. And Claude Wickard walked away whistling

and like dusting his hands off and he thought that was it. And he ran into America's homemakers who surged up like a tidal wave of angry people wearing aprons. It came after him and he ended up backing down pretty quick. Yeah. He put on his canvas wax, his wax canvas field jacket. Right. And he marched out of the room. His veiled back it. Haha. Thank you for getting on board. field jacket. Right. And he marched out of the room. His veiled back it.

Thank you for getting on board. So back to Roaveta. He sold his patent rights to a company called the Micro Westo Company in Iowa. I think we didn't mention he was, I think he was from Iowa, right? Davenport. Yeah. And he actually was one of those deals where you sell the patent rights, but then you come on board as a sort of spokesman and salesperson. So he led the Rovetta Bakery Machine Division, selling these things to more and more bakeries.

But he never became like some huge name. I think there are many, many more inventors of very common items that are much more well-known. He lived a very quiet life in Louisiana. And I think he retired in 71 and passed away at, what, close to 80? Mm-hmm. His age was supposed to 80. Yeah. As opposed to what? Oh, 1980. Died near 1980. Oh, okay. I got you. Yeah. Close to 80.

I don't know what year it was though, do you know? I don't, as a matter of fact, but we could kind of guess he lived, he was, oh, 1960. There it is right there. I was gonna do some math, luckily I was bailed out at the last minute. Yeah, so there you have it, with sliced bread, right? Yeah, well, there's one other thing.

There's an extra happy end to this story. That guy, Frank Bench, the nearly bankrupt baker who took a chance on his friend, Otto, and his new machine, his sales increased by 2000% when he started selling sliced bread and he was saved. Wow. Yep. Pretty cool. That's amazing.

I think it's pronounced beng. I hope, I really hope that Otto's like great grandson Tim Risen and he's like, it's Rowe Wetter. Well, it may have been since they were in Iowa. A lot of people, you know, changed their very German or French or whatever pronounced names to more American sounding. Sure. Like Clark.

What was Clark? Flarc? Flarc? I think Bryant was probably O'Brien at some point. No, Clark was Clark. It's a derivative of clerk, so I come from a long line of pencil pushers. Oh, how weirdly inappropriate. I agree.

I'm glad you said that. Thank you. Yeah. I guess short stuff's out.