Carol’s Column

Slicing bread is not as easy as it looks

I am a bread-battered wife. Every time I slice bread I am verbally abused by my irate spouse, who cannot understand why a once rectangular loaf of bread is now triangular.

But I am not alone. I know that out there are millions of other irregular bread slicers and they are all, without exception, female.

It is an indisputable fact that women are unable to cut a straight slice of bread. This could be described as a national problem.

For years I've battled to master the art of rectilinear slicing. Triangles, wedges, concave and convex pieces of bread — I can create them all. But an even slice? Impossible.

"Have you ever bought sliced bread?" asked my good friend Betty as we gazed despondently at a misshapen loaf. "No, that would be admitting defeat," I said, trying to match a piece of unevenly-cut cheese to a slice of bread.

Which brings me to another point. The pop-up toaster was invented by Hubert Throgthwaite, a man. Naturally. No woman would have created such an inefficient device.

The openings are always much too narrow for the bread, which gets stuck. The toast, by now smoking, can only be expelled by fiddling with a knife, or by turning the toaster upside down and banging it.

It was while Betty and I were banging away that a lightbulb metaphorically popped in my head. "Why don't we design a pop-up toaster with three openings? A fat one for thick chunks of bread, one wedge-shaped and one round, for toasted chocolate-chip muffins on Sundays," I said.

"Alternatively, we could invent a kitchen jig slicer," said Betty, always pragmatic. "I use a jig for cutting wood," she added.

"Our kitchen jig would be marked for required thickness of bread. We'd pop in the loaf, cut, and voila, the result would be a perfect straight slice."

We have formed a syndicate of bread-battered women and are in the process of patenting these devices. I believe we'll make millions. But more important, think of the marriages that might be saved.

■