Roam the world and you will find amazing bread in nearly every country. America is the most prosperous nation on earth, so why is it so hard to find amazing bread in our wonderful homeland? Well, we’ve been on a slippery slope of eroding bread quality for generations. One pivotal moment in that downward spiral came in the 1920s with a famous yet subversive invention: mechanically sliced bread.
When Otto Rohwedder introduced his automatic bread slicer machine in Missouri in 1928 his contraption was met with skepticism from the baking community, who knew from experience that slicing bread well before eating it would simply make the bread go stale faster and lose valuable moisture for retaining fresh texture. What they didn’t anticipate was that the slicer was only the beginning of degraded bread quality. Much more was to come.
The Roaring 1920s were, after all, a time of progress and prosperity as the middle class gained buying power to rapidly adopt new technological conveniences like the automobile, radio, telephone, and washing machine. Unfortunately white bread, stripped of nutrition in the wheat’s bran and germ to prolong shelf life, also gained wide adoption in the 1920s.
Wonder Bread, a brand that popularized sugar-laden white bread in the 1920s, implemented Rohwedder’s slicing technology and began mass-marketing sliced white bread across the country with the clever slogan “the greatest thing since sliced bread.” While these shortcuts and quality compromisers met some resistance with a minor whole wheat resurgence, the mass market adopted these conveniences and set the tone of low-quality bread in America for the better part of a century.
The bread industry quickly realized the wisdom of bakers that had originally criticized mechanically sliced bread, and they began to rely on a wide variety of cheap preservatives to prolong the shelf life of their modern “wonder.” Look at sliced bread labels in the grocery store today and you’ll find how widespread preservatives ruin virtually all bread sold in grocery stores. Cheap breads like Wonder Bread and Sara Lee will use a range of preservatives including Calcium Propionate, which research suggests could cause a wide range of side effects including autism. Even upscale brands in the grocery store like Dave’s Killer Bread use preservatives like cultured wheat and vinegar as cheap shortcuts to prolong shelf life. Trust us, those ingredients do nothing but damage bread’s flavor and convert what could be good bread into cardboard relics languishing on grocery store shelves. Avoid them.
Pre-slicing bread, relying on white flour, and depending on preservatives have evolved into unfortunate standards for bread across America. But perhaps they are symptoms of a bigger root cause consumer habit: buying bread from a grocery store. Regularly stopping by a boutique bakery every other day to pick up a fresh loaf of bread is impractical and usually impossible. It’s a lot more convenient to buy bread in a weekly stock-up trip at a grocery store. Until today.
Is it possible to get a premium loaf of bread that is both fresher AND more convenient? It is now. And it tastes amazing. That’s exactly why we designed Father Time Bread to ship fresh bread directly after being baked at the bakery straight to your doorstep. Instead of dealing with lines at the grocery store or driving to the other side of town once a year to find that boutique bakery, you can now order from your phone or computer and even set up a subscription to arrive regularly.
We’ve flipped the formula of American bread to create something that is far better tasting, more convenient, and more wholesome. We rely heavily on organic whole grains rather than pure white flour. We don’t use cheap preservatives (not even vinegar) to artificially prolong the shelf life at the expense of flavor. And we let you freshly slice the bread to retain the fresh, moist, vibrant flavor and texture you can only get from homemade bread. The taste is truly amazing, like bread should be.
So truthfully, the best thing since sliced bread is Father Time’s freshly sliced bread. Let us ship you a loaf so that you can taste the difference.
