What’s Better Than Sliced Bread?

Did you remember to ‘spring forward’?

A worthless social exercise that serves NO purpose….and the people think as I do….

A 2021 poll found that most people in the United States want to avoid switching between daylight saving and standard time, though there is no consensus behind which should be used all year. The poll from the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found only 25% of those questioned said they preferred to switch back and forth between standard and daylight saving time. Forty-three percent said they would like to see standard time used during the entire year, while 32% preferred that daylight saving time be used all year

Another indication how no one in DC listens to what us mere mortals have to say.

Let’s move on shall we?

It is a Sunday and what better day to throw some history your way?

I have become interested in baking especially bread….so I have been reading about the art and of course the history.

Sliced bread has become something we do not even think about these days….but did you know there was a time in our history when the loaf of sliced bread was banned?

The year was 1943, and Americans were in crisis. Across the Atlantic, war with Germany was raging. On the home front, homemakers were facing a very different sort of challenge: a nationwide ban on sliced bread.

“To U.S. housewives it was almost as bad as gas rationing—and a whale of a lot more trouble,” announced Time magazine on February 1, 1943. The article goes on to describe women fumbling with their grandmothers’ antiquated serrated knives. “Then came grief, cussing, lopsided slices which even the toaster refused, often a mad dash to the corner bakery for rolls. But most housewives sawed, grimly on—this war was getting pretty awful.”

The ban on sliced bread was just one of many resource-conserving campaigns during World War II. In May 1942, Americans received their first ration booklets and, within the year, commodities ranging from rubber tires to sugar were in short supply. Housewives, many of whom were also holding down demanding jobs to keep the labor force from collapsing, had to get creative. When the government rationed nylon, women resorted to drawing faux-nylon stockings using eyebrow pencils and when sugar and butter became scarce, they baked “victory cakes” sweetened with boiled raisins or whatever else was available.

So by January 18, 1943, when Claude R. Wickard, the secretary of agriculture and head of the War Foods Administration, declared the selling of sliced bread illegal, patience was already running thin. Since sliced bread required thicker wrapping to stay fresh, Wickard reasoned that the move would save wax paper, not to mention tons of alloyed steel used to make bread-slicing machines.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/america-banned-sliced-bread

There are many of these little historical tidbits……and they will be forthcoming. (Be warned, LOL)

Have a good Sunday.

Be well and be safe

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

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6 thoughts on “What’s Better Than Sliced Bread?

  1. I haven’t eaten sliced bread for decades. I buy fresh bread from the bakery, and slice it myself. (Big slices) My wife has granary sliced bread, but the slices are too thin for my liking.
    Ordinary white sliced bread is full of additives, preservatives, and sugar.
    Best wishes, Pete.

  2. The Proletariat is fond of sliced bread. As for me, I prefer to purchase artisan loaves and pinch off portions to douse with melted butter or olive oil ala Europa — As to the steel shortage in the Second World War … Our local butcher seemed to be able to keep his meat-slicing machine and somebody found enough spare steel to punch out a bunch of U.S. One-Cent pieces — some of which are egregiously expensive these days. I sometimes think the Rationing thing was very selective because a lot of people we knew were very clever about finding ways to barter so that they were never without anything they wanted for very long periods of time.

      1. I agree that your own baking is probably superior but I only dabble in doing that once in a great while because I am basically lazy and pampered and it is too much trouble.

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