In the days of the Roman gladiators, toasting bread was a way to prolong its life (not the gladiator’s; the bread). In fact, the word “tostum,” from which toast derives, is actually Latin for scorching or burning. (In my house, the word would be synonomous with ironing, but that’s another blog entirely.) In their conquests, the Romans took their love of toast with them and spread the custom as far away as Britain.
Following the Roman tradition, English colonists brought the toast tradition to the New World. In pre-electric times, there were a variety of methods employed to make toast. They ranged from using a hot hearthstone to putting bread on toasting forks and holding it over a fire and fancy bread holders that could be attached to the side of a fireplace and rotated into the flame.
Crompton and Company invented the first electric toaster in England in 1893. In 1909, it was developed in the United States. It was labor-intensive however, as it required someone to manually turn the toaster off when the toast was done and it also only toasted one side of the bread. In 1919, the pop-up toaster as we know it today was invented by Charles Strite.
The popularity of the toaster spread even further with the invention of pre-sliced bread in 1928 by Otto Frederick Rohwedder. When Wonder Bread introduced pre-sliced bread back in 1930, the toaster became the coolest thing since…well…since sliced bread!
Happy toasting!
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