THE INVENTION OF SLICED BREAD - White Bread: A Social History of the Store Bought Loaf - page 27

on fermentation biology, accurate measurement, efficient movement, the physiology of taste, bacteri-
ology, and “bakeshop entomology,” among other topics. 21
Industrial bakers did not conjure up the public's infatuation with scientific progress out of nothing to
serve their own interests. Nevertheless, the ethos of scientific eating definitely helped bakers. And they
certainly nurtured it. During the first decades of the twentieth century, displays of scientific expertise
would provide a key weapon in professional bakers' all-out war against home bread making.
MOTHER WAS A RANK FRAUD AS A BREAD MAKER
With small-scale bakeries effectively dispatched by machinery and oligopoly power, the fate of industri-
al baking turned on large-scale bakers' ability to outcompete women making bread at home. “For every
master baker there are a thousand housewives, and every housewife is either a competitor or a custom-
er,” George Haffner, president of the National Association of Master Bakers, warned at the group's 1915
annual meeting. Winning over housewives, he argued presciently, would require a full-scale mobiliza-
tion, and science would be bakers' primary ally in this battle for bread. 22
Convincing the country to fear small bakeries and their immigrant workers was one thing. Casting
doubt on the safety of Mother's bread was a bit harder. Home bakers had tremendous sanitary advantage
over distant factories. You didn't have to take a tour to see how your bread was baked, or guess at the
health and habits of your baker. People had baked bread at home for millennia without disaster. As a
result, industrial bakers and their allies in home economics could get only so far depicting homemade
bread as a biohazard. Bakers would have to outcompete housewives on other fronts. They would have
to make scientific bread appealing in its own right.
In this sense, bakers' mastery of science was a cultural performance, a theater of charisma, authority,
and power. Carefully scripted displays of precision, control, and efficiency served two functions: they
validated bakers' confidence in their own greatness, their special role in the march toward social pro-
gress. And they projected this self-image into a world of women deemed in need of education. “The
average housewife today who bakes bread is living in the dark,” a speaker at the 1916 convention of the
National Association of Master Bakers proclaimed. “She is ignorant of what the up-to-date method of
baking consists; she has to be educated, the same as a child is educated to eat from a plate—the only
difference being that our task is far harder than teaching a child, whose mind is receptive to instruction
and learning.” 23
A 1904 New York Times story echoed this sentiment, quoting “the manager of a big bread factory”
triumphantly and at length: “I am tired of hearing about that wonderful bread that mother used to make.
Mother was a rank fraud as a bread maker. … Don't you remember how often her bread went wrong?
… Mother sometimes blamed that on the weather, or maybe on fairies … but it was neither the weather
nor the fairies. It was because mother didn't know how to mix dough properly, or because there was
something wrong with her ingredients, and she didn't know enough to remedy it.” 24
Bakers' smug paternalism might have infuriated the ranks of middle-class women championing food
reforms and social improvement—except that they were just as ensorcelled as bakers. They had staked
their authority on scientific expertise and its world-changing potential. This sparked considerable de-
bate among home economists. Many believed strongly that housewives could efficiently make bread
at home, and dedicated themselves to teaching women the science of baking. In general, however,
the country's largely female purveyors of domestic advice and household education mostly embraced
bakers' efforts to win over women.
According to leading home economists, Mother could still compete with even the largest bread
factories on price, as long as one considered her labor “free.” She couldn't hope to compete on quality