When I ask for make do recipes or memories about eating make do dishes there were more than a few responses that involved light bread. Do you call it light bread, sandwich bread, loaf bread or just bread?
While light bread may not be the most nutritious item on the menu it certainly is cheap. Don’s comment yesterday about Sunbeam Bread got me to thinking about different brands of light bread and how each family seemed to have their favorite.
Around here when I was a kid, the two top choices for most folks was Sunbeam or Kern’s. I think Pap liked Kern’s and Granny liked whatever was cheaper that week. There was a local Kern’s Store/Delivery station, and I remember folks trying to break their code of which color twist tie represented the freshest bread.
Since I carry in Granny’s groceries every week, I’ve noticed her and Pap’s bread of choice now is Bunny Bread. Another brand I remember from childhood is Wonder Bread, but I don’t ever remember eating it.
Now on the subject of making do with light bread:
- Norma said: When I read your requests for ‘make do suppers’, many come to mind. I was born in 1947, so the 50’s were my “formative years”, as it were, so most of these are from the 50’s and 60’s. Here’s a few family favorites: My father loved to have cold cereal or hot oatmeal and buttered cheese toast on Sunday nights after church. It was a light repast, he called it, after the usual groaning board Sunday dinner.
- Amy Phillips said: Spread butter on sliced bread sprinkle with garlic salt, broil for a min or so, garlic bread… CHEAP, CHEAP,CHEAP!!
- Vicki Lane said: When I was in college, one summer I rented a room from a young couple with four children. The husband was a real estate agent and the mom (not much older than I) stayed home. Things got very close around the end of the month and when they couldn’t afford margarine, they spread their toast with Crisco and salted it. It wasn’t too bad.
- Don Casada said: Brother Jim and I are obviously going to have some of the same recollections. Before I read any of the comments, I was already thinking hamburger meat (with some sausage mixed in) on top of either cornbread or just plain Sunbeam loaf bread. In those days, Sunbeam bread came from Waldensian Bakeries in Valdese. It probably has something to do with a boy’s appetite, but white bread sure tasted better back then than it does now.
- B. Ruth said: I ask my son when he’s on his way to pick up the kids at day care, “Whats’ for Supper?”…He replies with a laugh…”Looks like white bread and potted meat tonight!”….He’s kidding of course, meaning money’s tight! He’s heard my tales of potted meat n’ white bread sandwiches. LOL Many a time when I was growing up we had canned Deviled Ham (or potted meat) and scrambled egg sandwiches on white bread.. either for lunch or supper! LOL No Mayonnaise either..if moistened it was always a salad dressing product…ewwww! Wieners sliced in half length ways…fried in a pan till dark. One half weiner was put on one slice of white bread with mustard. As a special splurge of happiness Mom would buy one large bottle 15 cents of soda. She gave us a small glass of Strawberry or Cherry soda filled with (aluminum tray) large ice cubes and on the side those little hot dog shaped cheese Tid-Bit crackers…what a treat of a meal in the summer…LOL I wonder if they still make those???
- Tipper said: I can’t find the comment, but someone mentioned mayonnaise sandwiches. Until I read that comment I had forgotten about eating mayo sandwiches at Mamaw’s house. I remember standing in the kitchen with a cousin who was eating one and he fixed me one too. I don’t remember if we ate the sandwich because there was nothing else or because he liked it.
Here at the Blind Pig house we use light bread for:
- quick and cheap supper of scrambled egg sandwiches
- cheese toast (chitter and chatter are made of cheese toast-or they should as much as they eat it)
- like Amy-I’ve used it for garlic bread
- buttered toast for breakfast
- sugar toast or cinnamon toast (when I’m sick I always want cinnamon toast and chocolate milk because that’s what Granny fixed for me when I was sick as a child)
- to sop up pork-n-beans
- chatter takes a bologna sandwich for her lunch-every day of the world
- and of course for pb and j sandwiches or just jelly for me
I found a neat video of 4 old Kern’s Bread commercials on youtube-you can go here to see them too. After I watched them I was reminded I had a favorite Kern’s Man myself. You can see him in the photo above. He’s in the brown shirt and pants and his name is Buster Laney. That’s Pap in the red. What are they all doing? Building our house. Pap and Buster are kneeling where my kitchen sink is today.
Got any other make do ideas for light bread? Do you call it light bread? What’s your favorite brand?
Tipper
Up in Virginia, in the 50’s and 60’s our Daddy would often tell us, when we complained about this or that …”The first light bread I ever had fell off a CCC truck” In the 30’s when he was a kid, things were real lean and he was probably exaggerating -but not by much I figure.
we call it white bread, I remember a step dad making me pb and mayo sandwich. haven’t had it in years. also we love grilled cheese on white bread. especially with Kraft singles
Rainbow Bread. Logo imbedded in our Screen Door in Roanoke Virginia; some kind of felt looking material, in color, as I recall. Yes, Light Bread was special in the 40’s, with color added “Oleo” ie; fake butter. Anything “Store Bought” was very special then; Baloney, Spam, Condensed milk, Potted meat, Vienna sausage, anything canned like Pineapple. Mother made upside down cake. Watkins products. The Fuller Brush man stuff. Pep, Wheaties, Corn Flakes of course, with WWII fighter plane models, cardboard, enclosed. Cracker Jax with a metal toy and at least 2 0r 3 Peanuts enclosed. Someone said “Nostalgia is Death.” I say it’s nothing but the “Long Memory” Reliving one’s fond experiences with joy.
I was born in ’47. My mother died when I was 18 months old, leaving Daddy with four children from a baby to age ten to rear by himself. We lived a mile back on a dead end road in an old house with no running water or indoor bathroom. We had heat in one room and that came from the wood burning cook Stive in the kitchen. Daddy wasn’t much of a cook so we had either peas or potatoes every day, but never both in the same day. Breakfast was out best meal because Daddy made water drop biscuits with fried eggs and water gravy. Three or four times per year we got a loaf of light bread. We ate it with sorghum molasses and butter mixed together with a fork. What a treat. The brand of bread we bought was Colonial, although the little country store three miles also sold Wonder bread. I still remember the first loaf of sandwich bread I ever saw. Daddy bought a loaf of it because the loaf was bigger and he thought it would go further. That was the one and only loaf he ever bought. He said it wasn’t real bread and it swelled up inside him like a marshmallow. I’m seventy years old now, but how well I remember those lean years in the rolling hills of western KY. I’ve spent the past five years writing about those hard times. It should make interesting reading for someone, someday. I still live in that old house I grew up in and yes, I do have running water now and the old Pointer wood burning cook stove has gone the way of the dinosaur but the memories linger on.
We called it light bread & loaf bread growing up. As far as “make do meals” go, I didn’t realize that other people didn’t eat cornbread with spaghetti until I went to college. When I came in & asked my Granny Janice why we didn’t have garlic bread with it while I was growing up, she told me that she couldn’t see spending money on fancy bread that we’d have for just one meal. I STILL like cornbread with spaghetti!
Never used a bread machine, but I do dearly love bread, especially homemade bread, even preferring it to cake or pie or any other desert.
God bless.
RB
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I grew up calling it light bread. We ate Kerns mostly.
I can not remember my Momma making homemade bread … ever. I occasionally will buy a loaf of store bread if in a pinch but mainly I make homemade whole wheat bread.
I lived in Houston Texas in the early 80’s. For lunch to save money I would take either tomatoes, bananas or pineapple and cheese and a loaf of bread to work. They could not grasp the thought of eating FRUIT on BREAD. It was hysterical to watch them watch me eat.
Debbie
Light Bread – Things were extremely tight at my house, one working parent with 4 kids. We called it loaf bread. My mom used to make a chocolate syrup from cocoa, sugar and water and pour it over the loaf bread as a sweet treet. We also ate mayonnaise “foldeds” and still do. My granddaughter loves them. Just mayo on a slice of loaf bread folded over. Yum. Another treat was to spread butter on the bread and sprinkle it with sugar. THAT was something! Debbie
Sunbeam was our favorite and we called it light bread. I remember my grandmother making biscuits 3 times a day for Grandpa because he demanded it – until she got too frail and then he would consent to light bread. But only then. I loved mayo sandwiches but we also spread butter on bread and sprinkled it with sugar for a treat. blessings, marlene
My folks bought Merita bread with the little girl on the package ( she had a bun). These days our light bread is bought at the store and the cheapest is usually the one I buy. We try not to buy white bread though, although it is the yummiest. And sometimes, I make loaf bread for us by hand, but usually that’s only when we can’t go to the store for a day or two.
In tribute to the Merita girl, I now wear my hair like her, I guess I thought she was cute.
We called it light bread. The one memory that really sticks in my mind about bread other than all the previous stories was when this girl in jr high asked this guy what he was eating & he told her “raw toast”. She had never heard of that & wanted to know where to get her some. lol
I haven’t heard nor remembered Langendorf bread since childhood but KOH’s mention made me stop and think: Wasn’t that Hoppy’s favorite bread? Langendorf was a major national brand of lightbread and was often heard as a sponsor of radio programs back in the Forties and Fifties.
I’ve always called it light bread. But somewhere down the road I lost the light and it’s now just bread. Most of the time. It kinda surprises me when light bread comes out of my mouth occasionally. LOL
My grandmother used to eat tomato sandwiches and a friend eats cucumber sandwiches, both made with light bread. See there I go…light bread. We like grilled cheese or broiled cheese (colby cheese on light bread, broiled till the cheese is melted and the bread is toasted on top)
we called it “white bread” and my mom never bought it. 🙁 instead she bought “hillbilly brand bread” which was a wheat bread. we made potato chip sandwiches with mayo on it and grilled peanut butter sandwiches – made just like grilled cheeses but with pb instead of the cheese. they are delicious!!!!
i love those stories of different ways to eat bread.. we called it white bread.. and it was for anything around the house we could find.. (coming from 7 in our family)
and my dad used to say.. he was so poor he would separate the potatoes from the corned beef in corned beef hash.. that was our favorite sandwich…. just heap some on the bread and yumm 🙂
hope you all stay warm and have a great day
big ladybug hugs
lynn
Tipper: we just called it white bread,i believe it was langendorf brand. to this day my favorite , butter/peanut butter sandwich.only now its on oat/grain bread for my health. most of the foods i liked as a kid,i still do. and of course lot,s of ice cream for my health. see ya .k.o.h
We just call it bread. I always hataed it when Mom got the square sandwich bread for 10 cents a loaf. I like the rounded top bread. For a while she bought some bread baked in completely round pans. That was good.
Anyway just this morning I ordered a bread making book off of Amazon. I actually made homemade bread last week. I really want to make some sourdough breads.
Tipper,
Yep Jim and Sandra, I’ve heard of pineapple sandwiches…I thought for years my Mom was the only weird one that ate dessert sandwiches…She absolutely loved them..It must be a generational Appalachian thang..Mom was 93 raised in the Art Deco and all that Jazz age, when the magazines were full of all those little fancy sandwiches..LOL
I crave them myself sometimes..
This is what I do for my husband. We had them a lot when money got tight. Cook a big pot of dried butter beans, now I don’t mean those little bitty ones, I mean those biggin’s..Add a stick of butter, sometimes I didn’t add that much, but his Mama did so I did too most of the time to make him happy and that’s the way Mama made em’..Make a skillet of cornbread and eat supper, but don’t eat all the beans. Save some, put in the refrigerator. The next day they will have congealed into a nice butter bean jelly. Call husband and tell him the beans are ready. He will take light bread, spread mayo a quarter inch thick on both sides..pile on the congealed butter beans and sliced onion…salt and pepper. Then he eats it like he is a fattnin’ hog..and this makes him as happy as a blue bird in Spring…A way to a this mans heart is thru his cold, congealed butter bean sandwich…until….the next day and whew…can’t stand to be around him…LOL
Thanks Tipper
we always called it light bread. and lord help me, I forgot about potted meat until I read it. potty meat on crackers or light bread. AND vienna sausages. Double Yuck, as my 5 yr old says! My papaw would eat sardeens on crackers too, but I think that may have been a payday luxury.
Lightbread wasn’t a staple in our house. It was a luxury and not very often eaten with our meals, that was biscuits for breakfast and cornbread at supper. Lightbread was for our school lunches and Daddy’s lunchbucket.
Oh, but payday. Daddy would take Mom to the store and they would bring back cinnamon buns and lightbread, and sometimes salt rising bread, and sometimes raisin bread, and pork chops maybe … or cubed steaks and Mom would flour it and make it in gravy and maybe she would let us have lightbread.
Her kitchen cabinet had a flour bin with a sifter built onto the funneled bottom and she would bring home twenty-five pound bags of flour. White Lily Flour, pinto beans, fatback, lard, arsh potatoes, those were the staples, but not lightbread. Lightbread was rationed out for lunchboxes. She made clothes out of the flour sacks.
Well, there was the time that Daddy got work at the Dixie Maid Bakery there in Kingsport. Family owned then but sold later to the conglomerates and branded Bunny Bread, the bakery let Daddy take home day-old doughnuts and we got a lot of lightbread then.
Creamed tuna on toast. Not everyone likes it, but it is still one of my favorite comfort foods and now I make it just for myself. Heat up some green peas on the side and that’s a great meal!
Oh, yes, we used white bread for lots of things. If Chitter and Chatter are made of cheese toast, then I was made of cinnamon toast as a kid. Another treat was to put Nestle’s Quick over the bread and eat it. We also had breakfast made by mixing peanut butter and syrup with broken up pieces of bread mixed in. And the joy of breakfast was to sop up egg yolk with lightly toasted bread (or biscuits for a treat). The only disgusting thing I remember was when my mother would make stewed tomatoes with sugar and bread in them – gack!
I liked Rainbow bread. My favorite thing was buttered (margarine) toast with jelly. It was a comfort food for me.
I’ve tried to like wheat bread but the truth is I don’t. I like white bread.
I make all my own bread now and it has whole wheat and oatmeal. I eat it but the truth is I still like light bread!
You know, Tipper, Creamed Chipped Beef on toast if a fine meal! Not healthy but very satisfying!
My parents always called it light bread and I still do. We used to make jelly and butter sandwiches, tomato and mayo sandwiches, mayo and peanut butter sandwiches and of course jelly and peanut butter. I still love jelly and peanut butter, but I wouldn’t ever make a jelly and butter sandwich again. We also mixed together butter and syrup and sopped it up with a slice of bread…mmm mmm.
My husband told me this of his childhood. He and his brothrs ate “foldover pinapple sandwiches”. You spread mayo on one slice of light bread and put a pineapple ring on it and fold it over (in half) and you have a “foldover pineapple sandwhich”. I have not been brave enough to try that. He said they also ate “jam sandwiches” which is a slice if bread “jammed” between two more slices of bread.
Bread was always called “light” bread at our house, too. My mother added oats as a filler to everything. I still do that sometimes to meatloaf and hamburgers. My dad loved peanut butter and thought it had lots of protein so he bought it in 5 lb. buckets that were plastic with a handle on top. We had peanut butter with molasses mixed together and spread on bread. Great post. I enjoyed all the comments, too.
Tipper, the Sunbeam Bakery is located in Thomasville, Ga, 30 miles south of our farm. But as a boy, I didn’t know a thing about brands. Light bread was only for special occasions. And Papa only bought Salad Dressing, not Mayo. To this day, I don’t like the taste of Salad Dressing.
But my Grandma always had real Mayo, and light bread, all the time, only half a mile away across the field.
A boyhood friend, Donald Hargraves, always had light bread, and Mayo. He taught me to make lettuce sandwiches. Take about an inch thick of lettuce and put it on two slices of light bread with a thick layer of Mayo, salt it good; instant meal!
Another memory: the first margarine I remember was white, and came in a plastic bag. The bag had a yellow color capsule that we would mash, and then we’d knead the bag to spread the color throughout. Papa wouldn’t let us taste it until it was mixed. Wonder if it changed the flavor?
Thankfully Mama still churned butter, but we drank so much of the milk cow’s production there was never enough cream left for much butter.
Your recounting of Bunny Bread reminded me of a beagle I used to have. We were out rabbit hunting one day and she got to missing — couldn’t find her — so I finally went home without her. About two days later we got a call that she had been seen down near Knoxville trailing a Bunny Bread truck! Whew!
And, by the way, we still call it light bread. Never knew there was any other name for it.
I always wished for Wonder Bread only because that is what most of my friends ate. We always had the store brand.
Just plain old butter bread was a good standby and French Toast was always a treat. My husband grew up on ‘cold milk soup’ … light bread tore into pieces with some sort of fruit mixed in (either what was canned or in season) with milk poured over. Let it stand a little bit so the bread absorbs the milk … it’s actually pretty good, especially on a hot summer day.
if i were to list my use of bread, that is what we called it, there was no other kind, it was 5 loaves for a dollar, and no brand names for us. anyway, your list is exactly line by line what we did. i love mayo sandwiches, mother made bread pudding, when we came home from school, we spread butter on a slice and sprinkled sugar and mashed it flat for a snack. i loved ketchup sandiwiches and our sandwich we had on the side of the road when traveling was canned pineapple slices on white bread with mayo. now we have hundreds of breads to choose from. i still love white bread.
In my early years money was very tight. Ma would buy a can of Eagle brand condensed milk, cut the top out, set the can in a pan of water and boil until the milk thickend into a beautiful caramel spread. We would spread this on white bread bread toast instead of butter. Actually we couldn’t afford real butter, instead we used Nucoa margarine. Back in the early forties the white colored margarine came in a clear pliable plastic bag with a little capsule of dark yellow food coloring attached to the inside. It was my job to break the small capsule and knead the margarine until the all coloring was mixed in making it look like real butter.
Mom had her hands full with 7 kids and money was tight always as I remember. She would make sugar syrupout of water, butter and butter in a cast iron skillet and stir it like gravy
We was so poor back in the 50’s with 7 kids in our family. Mom would stir up water, sugar and butter ,like a gravy but thin. we would ladle that on our light bread or buscuits and that was our meal but it was pretty tasty when we were hungry.That goes way back, Brenda
My parents always called it “light bread”. I wondered why, since I didn’t know there was any other kind of sandwich bread while growing up. One of our favorites was cinnamon toast, browned in the oven.
Tipper,
Kerns Bread was our favorite kind
too. Even today I love toasted
cheese sandwiches. And Chatter
knows a good bologny sandwich is
actually ‘country steak’.
A few years ago I was a dedicated
race car fan and one evening just before going to the racetrack, my girlfriend
fixed ‘burnt bologny’ sandwiches
for us to take to the Cleveland
Speedway. Just after the ‘hotlaps’
she opened hers and the owner came
by and asked her what she was eating. She told him and the next
week on the intercom we heard “Folks come get your Burnt
Bologny Sandwiches for just a dollar at our concession stands.”
Thanks for those memories…Ken
We say bread now- occasionally I’ll say light bread like my parents. The best thing in the world is pinto beans spooned on a slice; or plain bologna.
Tipper–It was always light bread in our family, and I can’t ever remember having “dark” bread from the grocery store until after I was grown and away on my own.
Don got me teary-eyed recalling Mom in the kitchen, and she certainly knew how to stretch things out (such as adding the bread to hamburger, and she did the same thing when she made meat loaf).
His commments also brought to mind a sandwich Mom made which I haven’t encountered much since. It was a pineapple sandwich–two slices of bread, mayo, and two slices of canned pineapple patted a bit to get some of the juice out.
I loved ’em, especially when they got the bread all soggy.
That would have been what a close friend mine in boyhood would have called a “dessert sandwich.” I wonder if anyone else is familiar with that term? The fellow’s name was Jackie Corbin, and his qualities as a trencherman were absolutely incredible. A normal rabbit-hunting meal for him, come dinnertime, would be four or five sandwiches (including at least one “dessert” one), a piece of cake or a fried pie, and some fruit. He would also consume anyone else’s leftovers with gusto.
He was a fine athlete who played small college football. He later did his doctoral work at the same place I did, Vanderbilt University, but with infinitely more success. He’s been a researcher there ever since (and still is) and was one of the team which discovered Viagra. A sterling example of an intelligent son of the Smokies.
In my mind’s eye though, I always see him plowing through a briar thicket like it wasn’t there or else plowing through food like he might not get another chance to eat for a week.
Jim Casada
http://www.jimcasadaoutdoors.com
P. S. Surely some of the folks, besides me, like bread pudding made from leftover or stale light bread.
Tipper,
Like Don, my Mom always added pieces of torn light bread to the hamburger. Back then there was only one type of hamburger. None of this “percentage of fat” types they sell today. The fat soaked into the burger as it cooked…We never had buns either, always used light bread to eat that burger on…Best burger in the world!
My Grandmother used to make toasted peanut butter open-faced sandwichs on a wood stove for me..Gosh, I’ve tried to make them but never could get the flavor right…sooo good!
My husband related to me that they would go to the Kerns bread factory in Knoxville, and buy day old bread. Then pick up the old, old bread take it home and boil it with corn for the hogs..One time they hit the motherload and came home with 50 loafs of day old light bread..His Mother put it in the freezer. With 8 kids they kept two freezers full. He says he couldn’t tell the difference from fresh bread. Took a lot of bread for 8 kids school lunch sandwichs..After all hot lunch at school in the 40’s was 15 or 20 cents depending on whether you got an extra milk or not…LOL
Thanks Tipper,
Always called it light bread,but don’t know why. We loved making sandwiches of about any kind.I’ve even made them using mayo and tator chips crushed up in it.Seems like when I was a young kid in the 50’s, we had a brand called Ideal. Anyway,we always bought white bread and remember it sticking to the rough of our mouths.Never knew it was bad for you til we turned the tv on and it seems like about everything is bad that I was raised on and still eat today.
We called it white bread. We also had the butter and sugar, mayo, and tomato sandwiches. Our make do meal was browned hamburger made into a white gravygravyover whitewhiteread
Wonder bread was the joy of my childhood, also Mom & Grandma’s homemade bread. We did either cinnamon and sugar or grated parmesan bubbled up under the broiler. My absolute favorite was homemade bread, toasted, with peanutbutter and marshmallow fluff! Cheap, delicious, and enough sugar to down a cow! Thanks for stirring up happy memories!
Its light bread to me and always has been as long as I can remember, We use whatever is the cheapest nowadays since money is tight but my favorite is Sara Lee and when you get a real fresh loaf nothing no better than a mayonnaise sandwich, matter of fact I had one of those last night, my kids thought it was gross. LOL
We called it Loaf Bread, but it wasn’t bought much. Mama made enough biscuits in the morning to eat all day…lots of tomato/biscuit sandwiches for lunch in the summer.
I was born in Elizabethton and grew up in Johnson City. I remember kerns and Sunbeam bread. We called it light bread . I loved soup beans ( call them pintos now) with Granny’s cornbread. I’m 75 years old.
We always called it light bread and I loved Pinto Bean Sopu over light bread. I always asked Mama to make the beans “soupy”
My younger brother closest to me and I used to eat bread like that with butter and sugar. I’d bet that Mom got tired of the gritty floor. We didn’t sprinkle the sugar on, we heaped it!
I don’t remember the brand of bread, but I remember riding my bike to a neighborhood store to get bread, and pretty often. It was either 10 or 15 cents in the 50’s.
My Dad would toast it, and put a slice Swiss cheese on it and broil it for lunch. There is nothing economical about that story, but he did it quite often, and I remember the cheese stretching out from the bread to his mouth when he took a bite.
My dad was a baker for Betsy Ross Bread. We ate a lot of that. He could bring home the day old loaves so we always had a freezer full. I like bologna sandwiches with grape jelly on them. We don’t eat white bread anymore, I really miss it. (I quit eating it when a craft show showed how to mush it up and make a clay like product.)
I had a bad sweet tooth when I was a boy (still got it, I reckon). I used to take a big glob of butter or margerine and mix it into some light Karo syrup with a fork. Then I’d just break off a piece of toasted white bread and swipe up some of that thick, ridiculously high calorie dense stuff. Typical breakfast was four pieces of bread. I bet there was well over 1000 calories of food energy in that concoction. Somehow, that doesn’t sound as appetizing writing about it now as it did back then…
Another use that I recall fondly was in the days after Jim and our sister had gone off to college, Mama would fix her and me hamburgers about every Thursday night. Daddy wouldn’t eat fried foods other than chicken back then, and Thursday was the night he normally went to a Rotary Club meeting. So it was our special hamburger night.
White bread went with those burgers in two ways – First, Mama would mix some bread in with the hamburger before cooking it so the meat would go further (and maybe hold on to the juices a little better). And then we always used white bread for the sandwich.
I’d love to have one of those Thursday hamburgers right now – even if it is a Tuesday.
But what I’d really love is to just sit in the kitchen and watch Mama make it.
We call it store bread, and used it for French toast! Both breakfast and supper.