Why are decent bread knives so cheap, compared to good chef's knives?

[Messer Mojo]

There are a lot of decent bread knives for 10-20$, but you can't really get a decent chef's knife for that price.
Does anybody know why?

 

[daddy yo yo]

I think you don’t need much of a grind at all. I mean, all it has to cut is bread while a chef‘s knife will cut so many different products.

For a bread knife, all you need is a blank and then the serrations. You can make things complicated by adding a grind or a taper, etc., but you don’t need that.

 

[btbyrd]

Grinds and geometry don't matter, and neither does steel because nobody ever sharpens them. As for chef's knives, you can get a well-performing Victorinox for under $50.

 

[Messer Mojo]

Grinds and geometry don't matter, and neither does steel because nobody ever sharpens them. As for chef's knives, you can get a well-performing Victorinox for under $50.

Yes I know, but its still 10-20$ more expensive than a bread knife.

Your answers make sense and I kinda guessed it, but I didn't know for sure and I couldn't find anything online.

 

[bahamaroot]

Because nobody wants 2 dozen bread knives.

 

[Kiru]

Because nobody wants 2 dozen bread knives.

I agree, on top of that, I've never seen any amazing looking bread knives......

 

[ian]

Why are there decent $5 pizza cutters?

 

[Corradobrit1]

Why are there decent $5 pizza cutters?

when you could spend a $1000 for a marginally fancier one

 

[jsph]

one way to think about it is that a bread knife is basically a saw. what it does is entirely different from what a (good) knife does. that idea's lost when so many people use serrated knives for this and that (note: a "tomato knife"?! oh my god), and when so many super-duper tv knives are able to dupe people into buying what are actually saws [made out of truly embarrassing metal, but/because it doesn't matter], but if you were to look close, you would see that what a good knife does is very different from what a saw does. it's not really even true to think of a good // very-well-sharpened knife as a saw on a microscopic scale, weirdly enough, because even though it's true that some "tooth" is very helpful to avoid skating over a super-smooth surface, like tomato skin, you're not really still sawing with a hyper-sharpened and polished edge that is not "toothy", but it will still cut like a terror; it's not ripping and tearing the surface, it is -- in a weird way -- parting the material it's coming into contact with, left and right. (this is very much related to the geometry of the grind, "thinness behind the edge", etc, no less than the angle and finishing of the edge itself, and helps in thinking about what that metal is doing as it heads into the material-to-be-cut -- and parts it, left and right.) once in a while, when you meet a terrifyingly sharp, you know what this feeling is; i can't sharpen a knife worth a damn, but three or four times i've been lucky enough to handle such a knife and it's... absurd: you know that you can't even really touch it to something without it being cut, and you can sometimes actually cut yourself without feeling it, because it hasn't sawed/ripped into your skin, it's just gone in. same way, it will _actually_ feel like it's _melting_ the material it's passing through. there was a reason somebody felt something like that one day and came up with "hot knife through butter". in a roundabout way, there's a mind-bending moment in some commentary by richard feynman about this idea, somewhere in a little question-and-answer video, mainly about how people don't really think about what it means to cut or part or push through some material with some other material -- nor the opposite, e.g., when one surface pushes back on an object, like why you don't fall through the chair you're sitting on. in a totally different way but on the same point, america's test kitchen makes this point in a very nice and practical way just in terms of its recommendations for steak knives: briefly put, never buy a serrated steak knife. they are cheap and you don't notice their getting dull, etc, etc, but they are ripping and tearing -- sawing -- your food, and that's pretty terrible for steaks most especially; you should always, if you care about not thrashing what you're cutting but actually just _cutting_ it, get straight-edge, not serrated, steak knives, even though, yes, you'll very quickly notice their getting dull (sadly, on ceramic; it's a horrible feeling, isn't it?), but if you can keep them sharp, they'll actually cut what you're trying to cut, not shred it. ... or just use cheap paring knives and keep sharpening them.

the serrated bread knife's just being a saw also means, as others have said, that the "grid" of the bulk of the blade is mostly irrelevant; the serrations are creating saw teeth, teeth for biting into and tearing the material, and as long as these saw teeth are basically still there and not _too_ rounded, it'll still saw the bread -- and, more importantly, will succeed in that first step of not skating over the hard crust of the bread. this is related to a crazy japanese knife/saw company's "solution" to the forever-sharp knife dream: if you look really close, you'd see the micro structure of the material was such that, as the material wore down, it constantly moved on to expose newer layers of micro serrations, just like rows and rows of sharks' teeth. ... but... "that's not a knife!", that's a saw. one thing about getting really great (actual-)knives is to experience how they can cut (most) bread. it's like a revelation to actually cut bread instead of saw bread, and most good and super-sharp knives can handle most medium-crust-y breads just fine [except you should obviously avoid crusts if you have a fragile/chippy knife; i've seen people comment they don't even like some knives' edges to scrape against the crust of a steak or fish skin]. in fact, i think the most times i hear "wow, that's a sharp knife" is when they've grabbed even a modest victorinox -- but one that's new or very well sharpened -- and cut some bread with it when a bread knife wasn't handy: you feel how it doesn't crush/compress the bread, like a dull knife would, and you also feel how it's not sawing the bread, like a bread knife would. obviously, the situation's different if you're dealing with a very hard-crusty bread. (... but i for one don't often seek out super-hard-crust-y bread, mostly for the same reason i don't usually race toward opportunities to have my hard palate ripped to shreds by shards of broken glass.) along these lines, one of the coolest demonstrations of a knife's sharpness (and you can catch this once in a while in a youtube video showing off a recent purchase or the results of an afternoon spent sharpening) is how it cuts through bread without compressing it at all. it just glides through and the slices fall over. i find this even more compelling than the usual tomato demonstration.

 

[JayS20]

I agree, on top of that, I've never seen any amazing looking bread knives......

Kamon
Xerxes
Xerxes Dami

 

[Kiru]

Kamon
Xerxes
Xerxes Dami

Jesus Christ, how much did they sell the second one for? Might look into eating more bread after this

 

[Aidan]

I bought 2 bread knives, the Tojiro and then my favourite bread knife is the Robert Herder Windmuhlemesser Ellenlang. A ten inch bread knife with a curve in the profile. Deals with a big loaf with ease.

 

[Jason183]

Because average bread knives only have single purpose VS multipurpose(chef knife), is only designed to cut bread. You don’t see ppl using serrated edge knife for meat, vegetables, etc. Unless you try, I also use my bread knives on watermelons

 

[PineWood]

The steel doesn't matter to much (so in general it is not a forged steel), and the spine usually does not taper between handle and tip, but I believe the grind still makes a difference. This is my Robert Herder Grand Moulin. The edge is really fine. Then the serrations are wide, and each serration has a wide "mini-bevel". This makes cutting (or sawing if you wish) very easy. Of course most of the $$ go into fit and finish and the handle.

 

[M1k3]

Because average bread knives only have single purpose VS multipurpose(chef knife), is only designed to cut bread. You don’t see ppl using serrated edge knife for meat, vegetables, etc. Unless you try, I also use my bread knives on watermelons

I see you've never worked in a kitchen with someone that uses a bread knife for EVERYTHING, cutting board life be damned.

 

[Bobby2shots]

Serrated knives don't "saw",,,, that's an internet myth. Saw-blades are actually chisel-tooth designs and cut forward-edge-travel into the material being cut, exactly like a hand-chisel. A typical circular saw-blade for example, will remove material and leave a 1/8" kerf.

Some handsaws especially Japanese hand-saws) might use this type of tooth design, and if you look closely, you'll realize that this type of saw is not a chisel-tooth design,,, but they have two rows of teeth with opposite "set" to each tooth,,, in other words, this type of tooth works in pairs,,,,one row cuts the left side of the kerf, while the parallel row cuts the opposite side of the kerf. This type of blade does not leave a flat-bottomed kerf. It'll leave a raised peak in the center of the kerf.

 

[toddnmd]

 

[DitmasPork]

There are a lot of decent bread knives for 10-20$, but you can't really get a decent chef's knife for that price.
Does anybody know why?

Depends on your definition of ‘decent.’ My Mac Superior bread knife was about $90, you can of course spend considerably more or less. There’re legions of cooks, both professional and home cook, who’re more cook than knife enthusiast—using ‘decent’ chefs knives costing well below what my bread knife cost—choosing not to by luxury knives that’re handmade by legendary blacksmiths. Victorinox, Mercer, and others produce, inexpensive (to me), ‘decent’ quality knives for home and pro cooks—even they stretch the knife budgets of many serious, excellent home cooks. I’ve cooked many meals in another’s kitchen using a $12 Kai Pure Kamanchi, which was fine, quite ‘decent’ for the price, cool design too! Everyone occupies their own strata when it comes to price point, quality—I’m unlikely to ever buy a $20 bread knife, that’s too cheap to catch my attention. With pricing, besides material costs, which aren’t huge, the major factor is production/marketing—how much time workers/craft people spend on each knife, etc. For how I cook, my demands of bread knives are pretty minimal, so long as it cuts bread well, keeps its edge, comfortable to hold, not an essential knife, won’t spend beyond $90—my demands of chef’s knives are much, much, much higher, they need more versatility, precision, sharpness, an essential knife.

 

[Jovidah]

You can get 'decent' bread knives for 10 bucks just like you can get 'decent' chef knives for 10 bucks. There really is a noticable difference between the trash tier, the average tier and the god tier bread knives, but most people who just buy pre-sliced bread and cut a handful of baguettes a year are unlikely to notice. Heck most supermarket breads you don't even need a bread knife for because they don't have much of a hard crust... you're really only going to start noticing once you start cutting bigger breads with harder crusts, and then there is a major difference.

I think part of the reason that knife nuts are unwilling to spend as much on it is that it's still basically a niche knife you use for a handful of things, and maintenance is a *****. Personally I've just been buying the cheapish Victorinox Fibrox 26cm pastry knives and whenever they get too blunt to do the job I just bought a new one...

FWIW, different serrations really cut differently, with the better knives making far cleaner cuts and going through hard crusts far easier. Length also really helps once you start cutting bigger breads, and ideally you want it to go hand-in-hand with rigidity - a lot of the cheaper ones are too short for my taste, and get more flexy as they get longer which kinda sucks for a bread knife.

 

[Bobby2shots]

I don't see why some folks think that sharpening a bread-knife is so difficult. You're just sharpening the teeth on one side, and flattening the back on the other side. You never touch the "gullets" unless the knife is so badly worn down to the point where the teeth have all but worn away/disappeared. The only part that is doing the actual cutting,,, is/are the points of the teeth. The gullets merely space the teeth properly.

 

[Shavely Manden]

I see you've never worked in a kitchen with someone that uses a bread knife for EVERYTHING, cutting board life be damned.

When I was a kid, my parents used an old bread knife with a bent & broken tip to cut everything, especially meat...I distinctly remember them using it often to slice flank steak. For the longest time, that bread knife and steak knives were the only knives used in prep work in our house. Eventually they moved on to these serrated utility knives my uncle in Alaska would send us, which were at least sharp, since we replaced them rather frequently. Mom was in her 60s before she got her first decent chef's knife, and then only because I gave it to her as a Christmas present.

 

[ModRQC]

All of the above, but basically, also a product of Adam Smith's law. Yes, they CAN be sharpened. But the bulk of them are tossed or forgotten in a drawer towards a newer one. Shelling considerable money over Chef/Gyuto is already a niche market, but it's quite juicy still, and there's joy and pride in the afterlife that adds to their appeal. Shelling over 100$ for a bread knife, would you? Already, there's a real alarm bell in my head, and the market basically proves that I'm not alone feeling this. I basically turn green on any bread knife over 50$... CAD.

Afterlife: a tedious job with little fruitfulness over buying a reputable 25$ unit when the time comes. But there are enough of them luxury ones to buy, if it sings to someone.

 

[Mattias504]

I would only spend more than maybe $60 on a bread knife if it really caught my eye or I baked or sliced bread all the time. Otherwise a forschner or cheaper will serve you just fine.

 

[daddy yo yo]

Victorinox would be my first choice. Bought one for my gf, and it is way better than any other bread knife I’ve ever had or used. My sister uses one from IKEA, the one with metal handle, costs 20€ or so, and it is good value too...