Bread. Knives.

So at my new job I find myself cutting a lot of bread. Harder crisper breads for crostini, soft potato breads, and brioche for desserts and such. I currently have a shun 6" utility knife I received from my wedding, in this application the lack of length makes it pretty useless. It's basically a stupid knife to begin with, I'll probably be giving it away to my mother in law or something, maybe she can cut her bagels with it.

Anyways I need to find a bread knife more suited for cutting bread. A quick search on here gave me some ideas, but I want to hear what you guys have to say. What kinds of serrations you like, opinions on offset, if steel really matters with bread knives. All the stuff. I also don't need to be breaking the bank either. I'm pretty close to buying this vikinox 10.25 bread knife, but want to see some other good options.

gude bread knives

Yeah I've seen all that but those are like $100 minimum.

Frequent recommendations are for the Tojiro
and for the MAC Bread Knife

I have the Tojiro and like it, but I don't end up cutting that much bread in general.

I cut a decent amount of homemade bread...I'd go with the Victorinox/Forschner as by far the best bang for the $ though some would prefer Tojiro/Mac. I sold my Tojiro because it didn't deal as well with hard SD as my Henckels. Then I bought a Gude and I find that it really is the ****.

Since the Tojiro ITK is available only at one source, consider the MAC Superior Bread Knife: http://www.cutleryandmore.com/mac-superior/bread-knife-p18087.

Scalloped edge works well on on everything but really hard crusts, and doesn't tear up the bread or the board.

I was looking for a bread knife a few weeks ago and decided to wait for the next Gude sale. In the interim, I purchased this Henckels from our local WS. $60 minus the current 20% off promotion. It's actually very nice. My wife was impressed with how cleanly it cut. Hope that doesn't veto the Gude bread sword purchase.

http://www.williams-sonoma.com/products/zwilling-ja-henckels-pro-9-bread-knife/?pkey=e|z15|1|best|0|1|24||1&cm_src=PRODUCTSEARCH

I like the Mercer Renaissance 8" bread knife for prep and line use. It's very well made for the price (about $30.) I have had mine for a year and it is still crazy sharp. I haven't sharpened it yet. I don't recommend getting anything you would hate to have to replace as bread knives tend to take a lot of abuse in professional kitchens.

Tojiro

The 210 Gude is (was) avail from "Lehmans" in Ohio. Last time I was looking it was 70ish with plain handle. They have had the 320 but we're not stocking it.

Loving the Tojiro 8.5 with pointy tip right now, not the bigger 270. Tucks in well on the line, can rip through the hard stuff, even be used on tomatoes & citrus if that's your thing and the price is right.

Tojiro

[video=youtube;dvNs4zB6zXg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvNs4zB6zXg[/video]

Buy a good 30cm vg10 chefs knife, or a 30cm Masahiro virgin carbon chefs knife, if you are right handed, and you can cut all crusts if you have them sharp without any problems, less tearing on the.bread than with a serrated knife, plus you can use them for more tasks. Maybe and 24-27cm, depending on how wide are the breads you will be cutting. That's what I use professionally as well in the house, chefs knife. I have worked with different European bread knives, but they cannot deliver as clean and delicate cuts on different breads.
Depending on how much money you have to spend, check the victorinox fibrox chefs knife serrated- ideal for hard veggies as well

P.s. No offense, but Danzo was the Naruto character that I disliked the most [emoji23]

As far as I can see from the video above, the Tojiro cuts pretty clean, but serrated knives are hard to sharpen, and the breads in the video were all soft doughs

never watched naruto. So your saying there's no reason to have a bread knife? I have many times used my gyuto to make quick bread cuts on the line. But this potato bread specifically is really soft.

Whatever everybody finds best for his needs. Myself, I prefer a good hard sharp Japanese chefs knife, I find it much more efficient. I have chefs in the job that cut almost everything with bread knives... I explained the reasons why, beacause of more clean and delicate cuts. If you have such a knife, soft breads are easier than the hard ones, which are no problem as well.
But not a European chefs knife, a hard and sharp Japanese.
On the other hand, Theory, who is an experienced professional judging by his videos, uses a bread knife...

For soft breads SG2 is divine, no bread knife can deliver thinner cleaner cuts. For hard crusts, I suppose it might prove chippy. I haven't tried it.
Out of personal experience, VG10 and carbons are ideal for both soft and hard

Found the Tojiro 270 to be worthless against hard crusty bread. The edges on the serrations became bent and I ended up hardly ever using it. Soft breads I just use a sharp gyuto and crusty bread I would use a fibrox or wustof.

Tojiro is my choice, I love that thing. It rips through all kinds of bread and more. Easy to sharpen also imho

ya i gotta admit I have less and less use for bread knives. I still cut bread but bread knives are annoying to sharpen and often leave more mess. like anything in life if you are comfortable with a bread knife I would agree the scallop edges beat most other options.

+1 tojiro. Cuts really clean

Is that MAC knife aggressive and thin on the scallops, or more restrained like the victorinox?

Had some el-cheapo once that was really good at establishing a guiding groove into anything without much pressure....

This Wusthof Pro is super underrated. I have the Tojiro - it's not that impressive and cost more. The Wusthof is just a more comfortable performer. Downside is there's no saya available for it.





If budget was no factor, the Kramer and Miyabi by Zwilling are nice bread knives.

Is there ANY advantage to making a bread knife out of MC66, like Miyabi do?

Some German bread knives being decent might have to do with the prevalence of heavy breads in germany...

LifeByA1000Cuts said:

Is there ANY advantage to making a bread knife out of MC66, like Miyabi do?

Click to expand...

Edge retention I guess? I mean... of course it's quite a different thing with bread knives, but I guess it matters here to.

In the past, I had quite cheap bread knives from Zwilling and Victorinox. The Victorinox performed quite good at a low price. Since a few years I use a Herder Grandmoulin with a quite aggressive teeth. Being a german with a affinity to heavy crusty whole-grain kind of breads that's quite a good thing. For softer or more delicate breads I'd go for a smoother (but not too smooth) grind. The big Güde bread knife would be a good choice IMHO when you want to spend so much... otherwise, we're back at the victorinox.

No experience with the Tojiro though... but judging from the geometry of the grind I think it's more develepoed towards softer breads.

joshsy81 said:

Tojiro is my choice, I love that thing. It rips through all kinds of bread and more. Easy to sharpen also imho

Click to expand...

What's your method? I've heard fine sandpaper wrapped around a dowel of the exact appropriate size to fit into the scallops, but I haven't yet bothered to figure out which size of dowel that would be. Or is there another way?

Dave M did a write up on sharpening bread knives awhile ago. Some google-fu?

@Iggy I tend to mentally mistake serrated knives for saws or files a lot, and then also forget that saws and files are edged tools and not abrasives made of steel

Serrated knives (steak and pizza even more than bread) tend to get abused on hard cutting surfaces a lot more, so brittle super-hard materials probably don't help... and I would assume to many, the most durable-seeming ones will be those that rely on tearing capability of the *sides* of the serrations that never contact the cutting surface....

And I guess geometry also is a different beast... the edge tends to be the thinnest part of a true knife, but the effectively thickest part of a saw...

Of course, you're right. My Herder Grandmoulin for example is paper thin "in" the serrations. I mean, really paper thin. So I had some microchips in the Serrations. After that I microbeveled the serrations with a ceramic rod and it works quite good know. As you said... no contact to cutting surface. But of course contact to kind of hard crusts and seeds and so on. So a ultrahigh-HRC PM-steel wouldn't be my first choice for a bread knife (as I do like hard crusty breads with alot of seeds...)

Ultra high powdered steel will be chippy most likely