Technical Bread

Now this is just some photograph that I happened to spot in a 1909 co-op magazine, the Manchester & Salford Herald, whilst researching something else. Well 1909 was the 50th year of the Manchester & Salford Equitable Co-Op Society so there would a jubilee history published that year. So I didn't take any details of why these bakers from the M&S are posing for the photographer in the Municipal Technical College.

I'm presuming this is the college that became UMIST, and now is integrated into Manchester University. For all I know that room with white brickwork might still exist it one of the older buildings on Whitworth Street. What a fine display of craft baking buns, cobs and bloomers. The large round loaves that break into four farls look particularly good.

It's not possible to say if this was a typical bread offer at the time. It is a demonstration of skill. The co-op societies always stressed their hygienic methods and unadulterated bread. Those bad practices bedevilled the working classes from obtaining a proper loaf throughout the 19th Century. Twenty odd year later this would probably look quaint as the sliced bread revolution swept the USA and came to Britain shortly afterwards.

Notice that there is no baton shaped bread. Can't remember when the staple shape of French bread made its appearance in the supermarkets. Definitely in the early 1980's in Chorlton.

There is a good article in The Atlantic magazine : "The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread: A Brief History of Sliced Bread. Has some good pictures including an illustration of the 1928 patent for the slicing machine.

Bread in a wrapper

Here we have the M&SE promoting their bread. I like the use of the word propaganda. This is 1929 and before the word became tainted by political and military conflicts of the dictatorships of Europe. But a cart clopping down the street with a pretend extra large loaf is hardly the dark forces of propaganda.

The term wrapped bread is stressed to promote the hygienic production and handling. This was a fairly new way of retailing by putting loaves in grease proof paper. The days of the unwrapped bread would be seen as old fashioned. Though people apparently survived for centuries and centuries by buying loaves not in paper.

However there was a further development just on the horizon. Sliced bread! Invented in the USA and the date usually quoted is 1928. The slicing machines had been developed a lot earlier it was holding the slices together in suitable packaging that was needed.

One of the pioneers in marketing sliced bread in Britain was R.Sharrock & Sons here in Manchester. They had bakeries, or scientific plants as they called them, in Chorlton-on-Medlock and they introduced the "Tip Top" loaf. You got 22 even slices in a 2lb  loaf.  Their display adverts gave instructions. "The Tip Top wrapper opens at the end, the loaf is boxed in a tray, which has been hygienically treated. The tray slides out and you simply take the number of slices required - push the tray back and tuck in the ends." All this for 4½d. The rest you know....it's the best thing since sliced bread.

Credits : M&SE Herald 1929. Display advert Manchester Guardian 29th April 1930