The first breads probably originate from Neolithic times, some 12,000 years ago. This was a very primitive bread probably made from a stone crushed grain mixed with water and cooked on hot stones and covered with hot ashes.
The average American eats almost 60 pounds of bread a year.
Otto Frederick Rohwedder has been called the "father of sliced bread". He worked for many years on developing a bread slicer, starting in 1912. His first efforts met with resistance from bakers, who informed him that the sliced bread would quickly go stale. By 1928, Rohwedder had finally designed a slicer that would also wrap the bread. A baker in Battle Creek, Michigan was the first to begin using this machine.
Kansas produced more than 490 million bushels of wheat in 1997. This is enough to make almost 36 billion loaves of bread. |
