The first effective bread-slicing machine was invented by Iowa-born Otto Frederick Rohwedder and put into service in 1928 by the Chillicothe (Missouri) Baking Company (the local paper ran a front page story on it). By the 1930s, pre-sliced bread was fully commercialized, and standardization was reinforced by other inventions that required uniform slices, such as toasters. The common phrase, "the best thing since sliced bread," as a way of hyping a new product or invention may have come into use based on an advertising slogan for Wonder Bread, the first commercial manufacturer of pre-wrapped, pre-sliced bread. With such products rapidly penetrating the American home, automated bread-making was not only an invention benchmark, but also a key indicator of the mechanization of daily life from the 1930s onward.

Machine-made bread eventually became almost wholly artificial, bearing little resemblance to the look, feel, and taste of the hand-made variety -- so much so that manufacturers felt compelled to inject it with artificial vitamins to restore food value. And the soft, sponge-like, and very white "bread" found some unexpected applications. For instance, while bread had been used since the 17th century to clean the frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, Wonder Bread proved to be an especially effective sponge in the most recent restoration of Michelangelo's masterpiece.

With things going so far, it is no surprise that the back-to-nature whole foods movement chose to celebrate bread made in the way of earlier generations. People reverted to making their own bread at home, initially kneading and baking by hand, producing loaves of hearty consistency. By the late 1970s, however, machines began to appear in American homes, and all you had to do was toss in the ingredients and, within a few hours, out would pop a perfect loaf, barely touched by human hands.

Though I confess I never tried bread from one of those home machines, I'm sure it tasted good. It also helped ease the craving for something homemade for people with increasingly busy lives. Even as we seek a new balance in our food-ways, mechanized food, I am sure, will always be with us.

Images: 1. The author's friends/Jerry Eisterhold; 2. A page from a 1937 cookbook/Smithsonian Institution.

This post also appears on the Smithsonian's O Say Can You See? blog, an Atlantic partner site.