Our Daily Bread

When I was a child on Wellington Hill in Dorchester during World War One many women still made their own bread. The flour manufacturers were interested in housewives rather than in wholesale bakers and their advertisements were more prevalent than those of cigarettes. In the last year of the war I went to the third grade of the Edmund P. Tileston School, and I can remember the large colored billboards along Blue Hill Avenue on my way to school. Advertising had not yet become a demi-art between psychology and astrology, and a simple statement of fact then sufficed. Pillsbury’s flour in red and white lettering was “best.” Ceresota showed a small boy with a large knife cutting himself a slice of bread. Gold Medal with its red setting sun underscored “Eventually—Why Not Now?” King Arthur, helmeted and bearing a Red Cross banner, reined in his black charger above the motto “Never Bleached.”

Hardly anyone makes bread any more and the bakers would not want to encourage any revival of this homely art. Ceresota seems to have vanished, though on the back shelves of the supermarket there are still the familiar bags of the other three brands—Pillsbury’s with its four XXXX’s, the blue lettering and orange disk of Gold Medal, and King Arthur on his charger. Though the two former brands are now bleached, King Arthur still retains his proud motto. Beyond the obscure section reserved for flour are the open counters piled with bread. There they were—Marvel, Select, Anne this and Betty that bread, each loaf sealed antiseptically in wax paper that has been treated with chemicals to give it that “fresh bread” smell. Pick up a loaf and your fingers sink down into the flabby substance underneath. According to the label the loaf is enriched with an assortment of vitamins, so that the fact that it is tasteless, characterless and lacking in nutritive Value is perhaps irrelevant. Calcium propionate has been added to retard spoilage, i.e., to keep it apparently fresh on the counter several days. It also contains a dough conditioner.

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Francis Russell

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When I was a child on Wellington Hill in Dorchester during World War One many women still made their own bread. The flour manufacturers were interested in housewives rather than in wholesale bakers and their advertisements were more prevalent than those of cigarettes. In the last year of the war I went to the third grade of the Edmund P. Tileston School, and I can remember the large colored billboards along Blue Hill Avenue on my way to school. Advertising had not yet become a demi-art between psychology and astrology, and a simple statement of fact then sufficed. Pillsbury’s flour in red and white lettering was “best.” Ceresota showed a small boy with a large knife cutting himself a slice of bread. Gold Medal with its red setting sun underscored “Eventually—Why Not Now?” King Arthur, helmeted and bearing a Red Cross banner, reined in his black charger above the motto “Never Bleached.”

Hardly anyone makes bread any more and the bakers would not want to encourage any revival of this homely art. Ceresota seems to have vanished, though on the back shelves of the supermarket there are still the familiar bags of the other three brands—Pillsbury’s with its four XXXX’s, the blue lettering and orange disk of Gold Medal, and King Arthur on his charger. Though the two former brands are now bleached, King Arthur still retains his proud motto. Beyond the obscure section reserved for flour are the open counters piled with bread. There they were—Marvel, Select, Anne this and Betty that bread, each loaf sealed antiseptically in wax paper that has been treated with chemicals to give it that “fresh bread” smell. Pick up a loaf and your fingers sink down into the flabby substance underneath. According to the label the loaf is enriched with an assortment of vitamins, so that the fact that it is tasteless, characterless and lacking in nutritive Value is perhaps irrelevant. Calcium propionate has been added to retard spoilage, i.e., to keep it apparently fresh on the counter several days. It also contains a dough conditioner.