Do You Need a Fancy Bread Knife?

I'm a big instrumentality of utilizing the close instrumentality for the occupation successful the kitchen. No astonishment there, yet I often get that FOMO-y feeling that thing caller oregon antithetic mightiness beryllium amended than what I own.

Several months ago, I looked astatine a acceptable of c alloy knives made successful Oregon by Steelport. They were beautiful, with their leaf patina and sculptural wood handles. I wondered if I was keeping up with the Portlandians, and peculiarly their breadstuff knives, erstwhile I compared it with my inexpensive but high-performing Mercer Culinary Millenia.

The Mercer is America’s Test Kitchen's top pick for serrated breadstuff knives, with its snub chemoreceptor and pointy teeth. The achromatic integrative grip is grippy, chunky, and functional. It instantly replaced its predecessor, a nostalgia-inducing but low-performing stainless fig that I got successful Paris for inexpensive due to the fact that it had a ace successful the handle.

Looking astatine the Steelport 10-inch Bread Knife astatine my favourite commercialized show, I daydreamed astir however it mightiness enactment adjacent amended than the $25 Mercer. At an astounding 450 bucks … little intermission present arsenic the writer pulls retired a calculator and divides 450 by 25 … could it beryllium 18 times better? I volition not fto that thought waggle around. It was not 18 times better, but I'll fto you wonderment for a infinitesimal if it was possibly a couple.

Leaving terms retired of it for a moment, high-end breadstuff knives of this prime person a batch going for them. The Steelport is rather handsome, with a burl-wood grip and grey leaf that basal retired from the less-interesting knives successful your block. At 65 connected the Rockwell C scale, it is simply a peculiarly hard blade. That level of hardness tin marque the alloy a small brittle but allows the leaf to beryllium narrow, highly sharp, and capable to clasp a ripping borderline for a agelong time. The grip is simply a small much "multi-planar" than astir knives, and it is rather comfortable. The apical of the blade, known arsenic the spine, is rounded, thing you'll admit if you're utilizing it for a agelong time, arsenic it tin support blisters from forming connected your scale finger; much knives should bash this. There's besides a digit nook astatine the leaf heel, which tin marque you consciousness much slotted into your grip. One quality betwixt the 2 knives is that the Mercer has pointier serrations compared to the Steelport's much rounded tips; a choppy water versus rolling seas, if you will.

I thought this mightiness marque a noticeable quality truthful I started cutting worldly up, buying and making loaves, past tearing into them with 1 weapon past the different implicit the people of a mates of months. Both of them went done sandwich breadstuff with the top of ease, with zero harm to the breadstuff itself, the other of the manhandling you'd springiness the loaf if you went astatine it with a dull chef's knife. I was needlessly acrophobic erstwhile cutting vertically into delicate croissants and adjacent much truthful erstwhile I chopped horizontally done the crispy, laminated goodness similar you would bash to toast it oregon to marque a croissan'wich, but some blades conscionable sliced through, leaving cleanable edges and neat corners successful their wakes.