Any way you slice it

July 1, 2025 by
 |  6 Comments  |  Leave Comment

A reader comment to a recent article in The Guardian asked why bread slices have gotten thicker over the years. The same reader lamented that you cannot find thin sliced bread in the supermarket any more, and that by making the slices thicker, food companies were contributing to obesity issues. While I do not know if bread has actually gotten thicker over the years, if it is like any other product (at least in the US), I wouldn’t be surprised if the portions have increased in size.

Tuscan bread with herbs from Sift Magazine

Very few varieties of thin sliced bread are on offer in markets around me, and all are labeled “lite” or some variation thereof. Likewise, there are few thickly sliced breads, usually just one or two per store, called “Texas toast” (because everything is bigger in Texas). As an interesting aside, I have noticed that bread baked and sliced in the bakery department seems to have thinner slices than the packaged products sitting on the shelves. I am at a loss to explain why.

Of course, if you make your own bread, your slices can be any thickness you desire: thin for tea sandwiches or thick for French toast. Just one more reason to bake it yourself. A few more notes on the subject: Mel Brooks (born 1926) is older than sliced bread (first sold in 1928), and just five years after its invention, 80% of the bread sold in the US was pre-sliced. Also, some researchers posit that selling bread pre-sliced led to greater consumption of bread. So maybe the thickness of bread is not as important to any health issues as the convenience of not having to spend time slicing it.

Category: Antipasto

Post a comment

6 Comments

  • gamulholland  on  July 2, 2025

    I worked in a bakery/deli as a teenager, and I learned how to operate the bread-slicing machine, so I’m thinking maybe the places that slice the bread for you are using something like the same machines (and same preset thickness) that we had in the late 1980’s, whereas the giant companies selling bagged bread to the grocery stores have the funds to switch up their machines more often. I mean, that slicing machine at my work was a sturdy non-electronic chunk of metal— it was built to last.

  • FuzzyChef  on  July 2, 2025

    Yeah, I’ve seen slucing machine in bakeries that were over 40 years old.

  • breakthroughc  on  July 2, 2025

    I’m sure it is all about profit. If a loaf used to have 24 slices and now it has 20 the average household uses more loaves of bread per year instead of adjusting portions.

  • Goulashgirl  on  July 2, 2025

    My mom is 92 years-old and she has come to the same conclusion that slices are thicker these days. For thick sliced bread she makes just half a sandwich.

  • Polyglutton  on  July 7, 2025

    The thicker the slices, the quicker you go through a loaf and the more often you have to restock them. Of course, they could just make the loaves smaller, but strange are their ways.

  • mcvl  on  July 29, 2025

    It costs a fortune, but I can honestly recommend the Nicer Slicer (https://www.thenicerslicer.com/products/the-nicer-slicer), a modern take on the dear old-fashioned Slice-a-Slice.

Seen anything interesting? Let us know & we'll share it!

Categories

Archives