This 'making toast' topic has also made me remember a routine loaf of bread practice, which I haven't thought of, or seen I think for about 60 years perhaps. As a child I don't remember sliced bread. The routine that I do remember again, thanks to Alan, his topic has made me feel quite nostalgic. I remember the way my mother and her sister Brittania (plus the other ladies in our 'wagon train') always cut their loaves. It was always white bread, I don't remember brown bread at all.
The ladies (it was a matriarch culture, they were in charge!) always buttered and jammed the bread first, standing up usually so they could wander from child to child, sometimes there could be a lot of us around, then with a big fresh loaf tucked under one arm, still in its paper wrapping and in an upright position, they gripped it with one hand and then use their really sharp knives with the other to cut each child a slice or two. My Aunt Britannia used to sing to us as she did it. I didn't realise until years later was that was her way of keeping us kids under control. She used to make horrible tea though, two thirds sterilised milk and a dash of tea, ugh! Another job for us kids was to always keep the knives sharp.