Light Bread
This is sliced, store-bought loaf bread, usually Sunbeam. Light bread got its name because it is the opposite of cornbread and biscuits, both heavier breads. It was used for sandwiches or toast only. As one of our breakfast treats, we fried a slice of bread and sprinkled it with a mixture of cinnamon and sugar.
—Jean Boone Benfield – Mountain Born
I’ve never had fried light bread sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar, but I’m sure I would like it.
I use light bread to fry French toast and I adore cinnamon toast from the oven even though I haven’t had any in ages.
When I’m feeling puny or sick I always want cinnamon toast and chocolate milk because that’s what Granny fed me when I was a girl.
Light bread plays a role in Appalachian Foodways. To see several videos I’ve made about the way we use light bread go here.
Last night’s video: We Should Have Bought A Turning Plow; Answering Potato Questions; & Planting by the Moon.
Tipper
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Growing up in northern WI, my Dad would make me “milk toast” before school. White bread, toasted, with butter, cinnamon, and sugar, then he’d put in on a plate and pour heated milk over it. Then sometimes, he’d make me a “birds nest”. Heat butter in a pan, tear, or cut a hole in white bread, put it in the pan, drop an egg in the center with salt and pepper. I always asked for a runny egg so I could sop up the yolk with the crispy bread. Sure miss my Dad, he was a real character.
I GREW UP ON LIGHT BREAD. MAYO AND SLICED MATERS WAS MY FAVORITE. WE ALSO COVERED LIGHT BREAD WITH PEANUT BUTTER AND SLICED BANANA. OR LIGHT BREAD AND MAYO AND SLICED BANANA. LIGHT BREAD AND FRIED BOLOGNIA . I REMEMBER EATING LIGHT BREAD WITH A ROUND PIECE OF PINEAPPLE MAYO AND LIGHT BREAD. MY DAD NEVER ATE LIGHT BREAD HE ALWAYS ET BROWN BREAD SAID IT WAS BETTER FOR YOU. WHEN I WAS GOING TO BUSINESS COLLEGE MOTHER WOULD FIX ME A FRIED BOLOGNIA SANDWICH DUKES MAYO AND LIGHT BREAD. POTTED MEAT SPREAD OUT ON LIGHT BREAD AND WE NEVER CUT OFF THE EDGES OR CUT THE SAMMICH INTO. NOW THEY GOT 13 OR 15 KINDS OF GRAINS IN THE BREAD. NOTHING BETTER THAT WHITE BREAD AND A BOLOGNIA SANDWICH. SPAM I ATE ENOUGH SPAM GROWING UP I CAN’T EVEN LOOK AT THE CAN AS I GO DOWN THE AISLE. AND TO THINK MOPRE SPAM IS EATEN IN JAPAN THAN ANY OTHER COUNTRY. THANKS TIPPER PRESSLEY.
Growing up we didn’t have a toaster so my Mommy would put a bit of butter on some light bread and stick it in the oven to toast. The butter would melt right in the middle and got toasted around the edges but only on the top. The bottom side was soft. I still make my toast this way but I use more butter than what Mommy used. I always liked it when the light bread was really soft and I would tear it into pieces and put it in e coffee cup and put soup beans over it sometimes with chopped onions. One summer at Mawmaw’s she made me a sandwich with brown sugar and cheese. it was so good!
Hello Tipper , I recall when we ran out of light bread my grandmother would use a sliced biscuit to make my sandwich of ham and a fried egg. I was a child of southerners raised in the northern state of Michigan. I would open my lunch box and find the biscuit wrapped in wax paper. I did not want my classmates to be aware of my poor condition I would quickly tear a morsel off and hide my shame. One day my mother asked why the lunch box was full of crumbs . Why do you make such a mess . She was shocked when my lip started to quiver and tears rolled down my cheeks. I do not want Charlotte and Jane to know we are poor I sobbed . Years later I laughed as I ate a sausage and egg sandwich that I bought and it was not as good as my (long ago) homemade biscuit sandwich . Childhood memories of feeling different haunt many of us. Now I am proud to claim my southern roots. Love homemade anything especially the aprons made by my gramma.
Hey Miss Tipper, I’m guessing y’all are on pins and needles waiting on that sweet baby boy. I would be. Hope everything goes smoothly and he’ll soon arrive. Prayers for Katie, baby and y’all too. Now “light bread.” We never called it that , it was just bread(city girl). Fried bread was, then and now, called skillet toast. Yuuuuummy! Slathered with butter and even butter in the skillet. Get a gob of jelly, jam, preserves or apple butter. Oh my goodness. Makes my mouth water. Sometimes we’d have an over easy egg on top or what we called egg in the hole. Whatever it was it was delicious and a wonderful beginning of the day. When I’m hungry for something sweet and fast to fix, I’ll fix me a piece or two of oven broiled cinnamon toast. The bottom was just warm, not toasted. That to me is a bit of manna from heaven. Have a great week everyone and God bless y’all.
As a kid in W Va we would sometimes have cinnamon toast. Sunbeam bread, toasted rather than fried and topped with a little butter and cinnamon and sugar. That was a treat, usually served on a special day or on account of you were sick. On a different note, my MawMaw Smith would sometimes fry up a large piece of fat back and wrap in a slice of Sunbeam bread and hand it out the back door to me. I’d sneak it because my mother wasn’t fond of me eating that. Good memories.
During WWII, my grandpa worked at Oak Ridge; while there he ate and learned to like light bread. On his visits home, he would run me by the general store to pick up needed incidentals. When I got out of the truck, he would always remind me to “put it on the book and get a loaf of that lightening bread”! Although he was an excellent cook and always made great biscuits and corn bread, he had sure developed a like and a hankering for “loaf white bread”! It certainly became something we bought much more often; especially in the summer time when we made tomato sandwiches with a little salad dressing, a mater or two, and light bread! And some of the young’uns found out you could jus’ put sugar on it and it was a pretty tasty treat!
Oh yes indeedy: light bread fried on the skillet in butter and sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon was a special treat in our house. It was better than any fancy dessert to us children. Mom would use the bread that was starting to go stale to make it so that the bread wouldn’t go to waste. I can testify that bread never went to waste in our house.
My Mom was a farm girl from Gaston County, so my brothers and I grew up with fried baloney sandwiches. We were always happy when Mom announced that would be lunch. But she never made us a side of onions & cheese. So I watched your video several times and tried to cobble together a recipe. Would you please check this and tell me what I need to change? I’m really looking forward to a side dish of onions & cheese.
Baked Onions & Cheddar Cheese (Tipper Pressley)
onions, cut-up
butter
cheddar cheese, shredded
salt & pepper
Place pats of butter in the bottom of a baking dish. Add the onions on top and then salt and pepper them. Bake at an oven preheated to 400°F for about 30 minutes. Remove and cover with shredded cheese.
Return to the over and bake for an additional 10 minutes or until the cheese is melted to your liking.
Jim-that sounds about right 🙂 Here’s the recipe from our cookbook:
5 to 8 onions sliced thin
3 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons water
Salt and pepper to taste
Shredded cheese
Add sliced onions to a greased baking dish. Season with salt and pepper. Dot with butter. Sprinkle with water. Cover dish and bake at 400 degrees for about 30 to 40 minutes or until the onions are tender. During final 10 minutes of cooking, top with grated cheese and remove cover.
We always had light bread as a child. Now as an
adult I prefer the grain breads. Mom always gave us what we called milk toast, buttered toast with cinnamon and sugar and a little
milk poured over it. It went down easy on an upset tummy.
I always make my cinnamon toast in the oven. Mama used to take a little butter in a frying pan and fry us up some light bread and she would mash it in the pan almost flat and it would be crispy on the outside, so good. I also like to butter both sides of my bread and make grilled cheese sandwiches in the frying pan and mash them until almost flat. My granddaughter loves it if I cut them into sticks. That’s our version of cheese sticks. Flat but yummy!!
My Grandpa hated light bread, biscuit man 2 times a day. Took my woman up to visit in West Virginia and when Grandma put it on the table he threw it so far out the front door of the farm, he could have signed up for the Olympics! Scared my wife a little. So much for light bread.
I don’t think it is the same but I remember my Grandmother, frying her biscuit dough in a cast iron frying pan with just enough lip on it to hold a little hog lard grease. I think the correct name for this pan is griddle. She would do this and cook the rest of her and Grandaddy’s breakfast on a small flat top two eye coal stove in her dining room, this was in the late 50’s and early 60’s.
My Granny would fry us light bread or Roman meal bread and sprinkle sugar on top. We called it Granny Toast! I now make “Granny Toast” for my Grands. Thanks for recalling this sweet memory to my mind, as I am missing my loved ones that have gone home an awful lot this month.
Prayers for Granny, the girls and the precious little boys to come!
Correction to website address. This should be family.sbarnes.net
Like others I grew up eating mostly biscuits and cornbread being raised on a farm in the 1940s and 1950s. Occassionaly we would have light bread mostly Wonder bread, which we would make bologna sandwiches . In June of each year the church would have homecoming and I looked forward to the ladies from Memphis bringing sandwiches , pimento cheese, pineapple spread and even peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. One lady would cut off the crust .
In response to papaw’s comment on wrappers I have a picture of a family gathering in 1939 that has a loaf of Wonder bread on the table and appears to have a waxpaper wrapping with the circles that are on wrappers today. I have a site, sbarnes.family, that you can view this. Go to site click on family album, give it a few seconds to load, then on bottom of photo go to time line 2:37:21 and you can view the photo.I am the child on the left in the arms of my mom. I am one year old at this time.
I’ve fried light bread, or what I always knew it as white bread. I think we called it that because cornbread and biscuits had that yellowish tint to it, but mainly because the bread package said white bread on it. Wheat bread had wheat and honey butter breads had just that honey butter on their packages. Anyway, I’ve added butter to my pan fried one side of the white bread then flipped it to add cinnamon and sugar on it. It is a sweet treat, but honestly haven’t done that since I was a young adult. My daughter never cared for cinnamon so I never bothered to make it for her. My husband didn’t think much of it when I made it for him when we were first married. He preferred fried grilled cheese sandwiches. I have made fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches too. I think bread fried in butter taste good. Sadly just can’t do that much now days. It all gives me heartburn, so just not worth it.
When I grew up living with my aunt and grandparents, my uncle (my aunt’s brother) would try to help out with food for us and would go to a bread store and buy “hog bread”. It was day old loaves of light bread and little snack cakes that was thrown in a huge tall bag that sold for one dollar! We would immediately unload the bag and some of the bread was not too smashed to make sandwiches out of. My favorite part was looking for my favorite snack cake. It was oval shaped with cream colored icing and had a half pecan on top in the middle. I would find all that were in there and hide them for later.
If we were lucky enough to get a loaf of light bread growing up, we used it for bloney sammages with a big slice of onion or tomato. We never had toast or french toast but fresh churned butter smeared on a piece of light bread made a fine snack. The bread I remember as a child is not available where I live now and may not be available anywhere. I remember Kerns, Sunbeam, and Betsy Ross.
I’ve never had fried cinnamon toast either, but have had it from the oven as you said. My Mammaw used to make it for me when I was little. I especially liked to break up pieces of it and put it in my oats. Even better if I had a piece of bacon to go with it!
In watching the video, I can see that Matt is happy as a pig in slop with his new toy or tractor. Listening to you telling about potatoes, it was common around here to plant our seed or grocery store potatoes in a deep furrow and then fill in the furrow with dirt as they were plowed when they begin growing, the idea is the deeper the potatoes are planted and more dirt banked/ mounded around them as they grow will cause them to make/produce more potatoes. Just a suggestion Y’all may want to look into if planting longer rows of potatoes in Pap’s garden is a plow I know as a middle buster to plow up the potatoes after they produce, something else that will save Matt a sore back. It is similar to the turning plow but plows a deep V shaped furrow/fur. I think on some you can change the plow from being a middle buster to a a subsoiler by removing two bolts and just changing the plow itself. A subsoiler will really plow deep and break up any hard clay underneath the topsoil. Tractor Supply carries this plow. In the past generations Good Friday was the day for planting many things in the garden. My neighbor was killed in 1981 by getting run over with his tractor when plowing and planting his garden on Good Friday. Another story for another day with more detailed information.
my mother always had Dandee white bread. It was used for everything. my favorite toast was made in a frying pan with butter spread on the bread none in the pan. yum
It was always eggs, biscuits and gravy for breakfast at our house. We never had cereal or toast.. we didn’t know what French toast was! The only time we had light bread (Merita) was on a baloney sandwich and RC cola. That was a treat for us. I have never got above my raising because sometimes In the summer, I’ll eat a baloney sandwich on white bread with mayo, ripe tomato, throw in some Lays potato chips and I’m in heaven!
Everyone have a great Monday!
Up here in Minnesota I grew up on Wonder bread and Tastee brands which we would call white bread. Now days I love sourdough bread made in my dutch oven, toasted with blackberry jam…
We had light bread when I was growing up. The northern kids didn’t know what I was talking about. My mother cooked a large breakfast when I was young–sausage, bacon or fatback with biscuits, gravy, eggs, maybe some sweetened rice or oatmeal. My Dad got to the point where his blood pressure and cholesterol got out of hand and he could not eat these things often but he still ate them about 2-3 times/week. He also had an ulcer which in those days they tried to control with what you ate. Today they know that ulcers are usually caused by bacteria, so they treat them with antibiotics. Anyway, I got away from heavy breakfasts and would eat a piece of toast with butter and drink a cup of cocoa before going to school. This started in high school. At home we would have toast with butter and cinnamon sprinkled on top and put it under the broiler. When I was very young, I would ask Mom for a “big agg sandwich.” This was beating a couple of eggs and pouring them into an iron skillet that had melted butter and fry them. When done I folded the egg and put it on the two pieces of bread and ate. I didn’t put anything on it. We would sometimes have fried bologna for breakfast for the meat portion. I loved bologna sandwiches especially in summer with a fresh tomato and onion. I usually put some mayo on the bread, too.
Oh wow, I just had cinnamon toast for breakfast Saturday morning. Had been craving it and just had to have it. We also enjoy french toast made with Texas toast and link sausage. We love biscuit bread – one big biscuit baked in cast iron frypan and cut or pinched off as you like it. Man, I wish I had a toasted piece of light bread with my homemade jelly or preserves, and a big link of sausage…..that would be fit for a king. (or queen) lol……..Once again, all the comments bring back memories that I love.
We got another big frost this morning!
When I was growing up I thought light bread was a luxury. And it might have been! You got me to thinking and you know what that means.⚡
I got to thinking about how light bread got from a bakery into a home. Apparently plastic bread bags didn’t come into being until 1957. Aah 1957, prehistory to you perhaps but well established memories to me.
Pre-sliced bread became a thing in 1928 (according to google). Between then and 1957 what? Google thinks it came in cloth or waxed paper bags. I don’t have a memory of those but we couldn’t afford it anyway, so how could I know.
I also learned that our government stopped the production of sliced bread during WW2 because a shortage of wheat and its need to feed the military (again, according to google). So that’s 29 years, minus the war, of bread in something other than the nice, clean, re-tieable plastic bag we have today.
Has anyone seen one of those pre-1957 bread bags? Or remembers them? Maybe has one stored away? I’d like to see it!
I am 77 and I remember light bread coming in waxed paper wrapping. The paper was colorfully printed just as the plastic bags of today are. We called it light bread, too, but I thought “light” referred to the color, not the weight/density. I don’t remember any “dark” bread – like whole wheat, rye, or pumpernickel at the grocery when I was a child, but by the time I was a teenager grocery stores had these “exotic” (to me) breads. We always had cornbread cooked in the black, cast iron skillet – either oven baked or cooked on top of the stove like thick pancakes. I preferred the stove top cornbread and that’s mostly what my mom cooked in the summer to avoid heating up the kitchen.
Video question:
In today’s (Last night’s video) it shows Matt trying to till the fallow ground with his new tiller and mentioning the fact it should’ve been turned first.
I could have sworn the video from a few days ago showed him turning it over with his new Kubota.
Anyway, I’m sure y’all will love that machine. I bought one very similar a few years ago and it’s been very useful not to mention just fun to work with. Tell him one of the most useful additions I put on mine is a spinner knob on the steering wheel. They sell them at the Kubota place and with the power steering it sure makes maneuvering a breeze.
Praying for blessings for your household this summer as from reading y’all will have a lot of activity going on with new arrivals, health issues and so on.
God Bless
Don-the video showed the tiller, but Matt was saying it needed to be turned or cut deeper than the tiller was going 🙂
A quick breakfast for my father was Rainbow brand lightbread with kayo syrup and butter all mixed together and a strong cup of JFG coffee.
When I was a child, my mother made what she called cinnamon bread, which was oven- browned white bread with butter, sugar, and cinnamon. To this day I love cinnamon bread but rarely eat it trying to avoid sugar. But every once in a while, I cannot resist this quickly made and glorious sweet treat. There’s hardly anything better.
I’m like Randy. When we three were kids we didn’t get light bread. If there were any, it was for Dad’s dinner (lunch). Don’t even recall my first acquaintance with French toast, probably in teenage years. We did occasionally have the biscuit fry “pone”. Wish I could remember what Mom called it. Maybe ” lazy pone”.
Growing up light bread was our go to for all things. No hotdog or hamburger buns, just good ole white bread. We even used the bread wrappers over our shoes to play in snow. Good childhood memories for sure.
Growing up, we had fried light bread in butter with an egg on top ,and bacon on the side . Mom would cut it up into little squares and sop it in the egg yoke. Um um good .. If the bread was just a little burned it was even better.
Growing up, I definitely remember Sunbeam and Wonder bread, but my mama usually bought Stroehman bread. We always had biscuits every day for supper, or cornbread if she was making beans. On Saturday evenings, she always baked homemade bread or rolls so we would have it for our Sunday dinner. We only used light bread for sandwiches or French toast during the week. I have one granddaughter that loves cinnamon toast. Every Wednesday morning, when she comes to spend the day, she asks for a boiled egg and two cinnamon toasts.
My Daddy always called in light bread. I always thought that was funny. I didn’t know anyone else who called it that.
Light bread has been a staple in most homes but I would wager people who live north of the Mason Dixon call it something else. Years ago we were in Minnesota for a few days. Another couple and us had occasion to have dinner at a local restaurant. As the waitress was delivering our meal the other gentleman in our group asked the waitress if she had any light bread to which she answered, sure, I will right back. With the four of us, being from the deep south, looked at each other an began to chuckle. The meal you are referring to with toast, cinnamon and sugar, we call French Toast, but we mix the cinnamon, sugar, eggs, milk and a little vanilla, dip the bread in mixture on both sides and fry in a little butter. We then serve it will home grown cane syrup….yummy. Still praying for Granny and you guys. We did enjoy watching the Deer Hunter ‘play’ with his new toy.
Glenda, not light bread or French toast, but your comment about the restaurant makes me think of a dear friend. He was raised in Iowa on a large hog farm. His family sold the farm and moved to SC in the late 70’s. He tells of eating in a restaurant soon after moving and ordering a hot dog with everything on it. They brought him a southern style hot dog with the weeny, mustard, onions, chili and a pack of ketchup. He did not know what the chili was. I tease him and tell him a hot dog without chili but has slaw, relish or nothing at all on it is a Yankee hot dog. I also tease him about saying “you guys” being a sure fire sign he is not from the south. Without going into details Chip has been a mighty good friend for almost 40 years.
My heart longs for my grandma’s fried bread. It wasn’t fried white bread, but a homemade fried bread that I have not been able to replicate. The texture was so chewy yet crispy on the outside edges. I sure wish I knew how she made that, thanks for reminding me of her bread this morning.
When we were raising our son we always used wheat bread. Once when he was about 8 he was staying with friend and had some white bread and his friend’s mom cut off the crust. He came home declaring that he had the best bread ever! He said it was so soft and had no crust. Intrigued, I called the friends mom to find out what brand of bread she served. She said just plan old Wonder Bread! We laughed so hard! He did the same thing when another friends mom served him some cheese. I asked what was the name of the cheese. He thought for a moment and said…It sounds like Buddha!
Growing up, loaf or light bread was only used for sandwiches for Daddy to take to work or for us to make tomato sandwiches during the summer. We did not eat cereal or toast for breakfast. Mother and Daddy would get up early enough and work together to cook a real breakfast, meaning homemade biscuits, fully cooked (well done) eggs, grits and some type of pork meat. A man working physically demanding manual labor jobs can’t make it off toast and a bowl of cereal. Something I liked was something we called a hoecake, it was just one large biscuit instead of individual biscuits and we would just break chunks off it. Something I think I would ask for my last meal if on death row, would be homemade biscuits, fried fatback/side meat and sawmill gravy (hunky doo to us) made using the fatback grease. Now if there was some good homegrown cantaloupe to go with it, I would be in hog Heaven. If I was on death row that might be the only Heaven I would ever be in! Growing up, I never ate French toast but will occasionally eat it now, but like to use Texas toast bread to make it. Tipper you was lucky when feeling puny, we didn’t know anything about chocolate milk, milk was the last thing we would get if we had a fever, Mother would start giving us 7up or Sprite, it turned me against them. I do like a cold Canada Dry Ginger Ale every now and then.