White Bread (43 page)

walnut levain, at Acme Bakery, 185–86

“War Bread,” 112–13

Ward Bakery, 20–21, 24, 28

Ward Baking Company, 45–46; advances made by, 24–25; automatic baking by, 20–21; clean bread advertising by, 40–41, 44; history of, 25; monopolies and mergers, 27–29; in New York, 26–27; in Pittsburgh, 25–26; whole wheat bread sold by, 111; workers' conditions under, 35–36

Ward Food Products Corporation (WFPC), 27–28

Ward, George, 26, 30, 37

Ward, Hugh, 25, 26

Ward, James, 25

Ward, Robert, 26

Ward, William, 27–29, 35, 44, 178

War Food Order Number 1, 117

Warren, Mary D., 60

wartime: bread rationing during, 136; campaign for enrichment during, 109, 117–21, 123, 130; civilian diet and, 108–9.
See also
World War II

Washington Post
, 186

Weis, Robert, 150

Weston Foods, 133, 161

West Waterloo, Iowa, 110

wheat: American conservation of, 137; gluten-free diet and, 74–75; grown in Mexico, 150, 152–53; history of anxieties about, 78; local, 83, 87; preferred over corn in Mexico, 149–50; refined, 78, 83.
See also
flour

wheat bread.
See
whole wheat bread

wheat harvest (1946), 136

white bread: as an adjective, 164–65, 173; “Americanizing” immigrants, 7; American superiority and, 95–96; associated with status in Mexico, 149; associations with whiteness of, 64–66; attacks against, 88–90, 97–98; compared with Russian bread during Cold War, 141–42; consumed during 1930s and 1940s, and counterculture of 1960s and 1970s, 165, 178–79; current consumer profile for, 187; decrease in consumption (1967–1982), 180; eaten in moderation, 99–100; vs. European bread, 142–44; in Japan, 144–48; made in Mexico, 153–55; Mexican Bimbo bread, 133–34; Mexican consumption of, 148–50; nutritional superiority of, 96–97; racial fitness and, 95–96; sixties counterculture's criticism of, 166–67, 170; USDA endorsement of, 99, 100.
See also
enriched bread; industrial bread

white flour, 66–68, 78, 83, 89, 98, 99

whiteness of bread, 64–66

white supremacy, 21.
See also
racial eugenics; racial purity

white trash, 163–65, 187–88

White Trash Cookbook
(Mickler), 187

White Trash Cooking
, 163

White Trash Etiquette
, 163

“White Trash Manifesto” (Crimson Spectre), 188

white wheat bread, 65–66

Whitman College, 16

Whitmer bakeries, 96

whole wheat berry, 112

whole wheat bread: associated with status, 186–87; consumed in the late 1970s, 172; consumed in 1920s and 1930s, 98–99; consumed in 1930s and 1940s, 111; counterculture of 1960s and 1970s and, 173–74; criticism of, 96–97; Graham on, 15, 83, 84; health benefits of, 95; large-scale production of, 88–89; made at home in 1970s, 181–82; made by industrial bakers, 98–99; nutritional value of, 97; outselling white bread, 14; postwar consumption of, 123; USDA statement on, 99, 100

Wiggam, Albert Edward, 93

Wiley, Harvey W., 19, 66–68

Willet, Mo, 169–70

Williams, Michael, 36

Williams, Robert M., 114–15, 116–17

window bakeries, 41

Wisconsin Herald and Grant County Advertiser
, 86

Woman's Home Companion
, 141

women: competing with industrial bread makers, 61–63; cooking as an expressive art and, 170; domestic expertise and, 31–33; “femivore's dilemma,” 175–76; homemade bread and, 29–30; industrial bakers on homemade bread and, 62; making social change in the kitchen, 174–76; Mexican Agricultural Program and, 157–58; preferring store-bought bread, 30; and Progressive Era, 22.
See also
housewives

Wonder Bakeries, 29

Wonder bread, 29, 109, 126; advertisements, 70, 126, 127, 178; Martin Luther King Jr.'s call for boycott of, 168; misleading health claims by, 178; Sister Corita prints, 166, 168; in soul food, 187; white trash and, 165

Woodbury, Clarence, 124

Woodowson, E. M., 124

wood pulp fiber breads, 180–81

Woods, A. F., 99, 100

working conditions, in bakeries, 36, 38, 39

Works Progress Administration (WPA) workers, 110

world bread history, 3–6, 7

World War I, 109

World War II, 14; alternative food movement using rhetoric of, 107; bread consumption during, 123; bread made during, 112–13; civilians unfit to fight in, 110–11; famine relief after, 136–37; publicity on enriched bread during, 118–20

wrapped bread, 43–44

xenophobia, 49, 108

yeasts, 42, 192–93

Young, James Harvey, 34–35

yuppie bread, rise of, 181–85

Zanesville, Ohio, 58

Zapata, Emiliano, 148

Beacon Press

25 Beacon Street

Boston, Massachusetts 02108-2892

www.beacon.org

Beacon Press books

are published under the auspices of

the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.

© 2012

by Aaron Bobrow-Strain

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

15  14  13  12
 
8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

This book is printed on acid-free paper that meets the uncoated paper ANSI/NISO specifications for permanence as revised in 1992.

Text design by Wilsted & Taylor Publishing Services

Portions of chapter 5 originally appeared as “Making White Bread by the Bomb's Early Light: Anxiety, Abundance, and Industrial Food Power in the Early Cold War,”
Food and Foodways
19, nos. 1-2 (February 2011): 74–97 (a Taylor & Francis publication).

Lyrics from “White Trash Manifesto” by Crimson Spectre reprinted courtesy of Magic Bullet Records.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bobrow-Strain, Aaron.

White bread: a social history of the store-bought loaf / Aaron Bobrow-Strain. p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8070-4467-4 (hardcover: alk. paper) E-ISBN 978-0-8070-4468-1

1. Bread—Social aspects 2. Bread—United States—History. 3. Bread industry—United States—History. I. Title.

GT2868.2.B63 2012

641.81'509—dc23
 
 
2011032529