Usage As A Bread Knife
- Super Bread knife is primarily designed as a bread knife, although New West Knives also states it is capable of general food prep, and without them mentioning that, it is quite widespread use of serrated blades, mainly because people perceive serrated knives as sharp forever, maintenance free knives, which of course isn't true. Then again, I've had people seriously arguing with me that their beloved Cutco or whatever knife lasted 20 years without sharpening and still going strong, talk about magic. Anyway, being a bread knife I've started testing with bread. The one I had at home when the knife arrived was the usual(for me) whole grain loaf. That one has quite rough crust, but it isn't the hardest I have seen and had to cut. The actual test was to cut the bread into translucent slices and get the initial feel about its cutting performance. First slice felt weird, because the Super Bread went in too easy. I've adjusted and proceeded further. Quite nice results. Very clean cuts, resulting in super thin slices and minimal crumbling. Definitely better performance compared to my Gude Bread Knife. Next day we had a party at my place and Super Bread knife saw a lot more use, I'll describe other cutting in the next section, but I had a chance to cut French baguette and couple other soft breads. Again, good results, clean cuts, very little, almost no crumbs. Couple weeks later someone brought Panettone to my place, and I went at it with the super bread knife again. On its own, Super Bread did a quite good job, and it's definitely making cleaner cuts than the Gude because of the different serration pattern. On other occasions, as usual I cut large Panettones with either Watanabe Sujihiki knife or Watanabe Kintaro-Ame Sujihiki, well whenever in the mood, I use one of the Yanagibas too. Compared to those, much longer and sharper knives Super Bread looses, but considering how thin the edges are on my sujihikis and yanagibas, plus extra 4-5" in blade length make that comparison rather unfair. In short, if you have a 12" or so sujihiki laying around and a panettone to slice, then suji will do better compared to Super Bread, but I wouldn't cut hard or even medium crust bread with that suji, that's asking for a disaster and few hours of sharpening job. And finally, to conclude bread section, there was one bread on which Gude did better than Super Bread, which was homemade, super hard crust bread. That one was a tough cookie, literally... Even hefty Gude needed extra push to get through that, and Super Bread knife simply slid over the hard crust because the serrations or wave pattern is closer to straight edge in behavior and performance than to the toothy serrations on the Gude, which are designed to rip through.Usage As A Meat Slicer
- Another not so designated use was for the meat slicing. During the few weeks I've had the knife at home for testing, several fairly large parties were hosted at my place, and there was no shortage of meat during those events. Large pieces of the rib eye, approximately 18-20lbs. Typical work involved slicing the meat into smaller peices and then cleaning the fat, tendons etc. Afterwards, cutting the prepared chunk into smaller pieces suitable for skewers. As far as slicing went, Super Bread knife did pretty good for its length. I emphasize the blade length, because in all cases, Super Bread was up against very stiff competition, specifically two sujihikis from Watanabe, and on occasion yanagibas: Aritsugu 300mm Honkasymi Yanagiba and Aritsugu 300mm Wood Pattern Yanagiba. Alright, obviously comparing those knives with Super Bread was not exactly fair, sujihikis and yanagibas are dedicated protein knives, with very thin edges, and very substantial advantage in length, mine are all 12.5" long. 4" difference in blade length is more than just noticeable. Especially, when you are tackling 20lbs pieces of meat. In practice, you could also use a gyuto for meat slicing, after all it translates into cow blade. Gyuto is a general food prep knife, and Super Bread is also claimed to be a general food prep knife and as such, I think it did qualify for the job. And no, I didn't expect it to win over sujihiki or yanagiba, that was not the expectation, after all general purpose knife generally will loose vs. specialized knife :) That is if you are doing the specific task specialized knife was designed for. As mentioned above, I was testing Super Bread as a general purpose knife, and meat slicing and cleaning is fairly common task. Results were pretty good. Super Bread produced pretty clean cuts, quite effortless cutting at that. What was not going too well was the fat/tendon removal part. Yes, chisel edge and sharpness help, but wave pattern edge doesn't. Well, it was an interesting thing to test anyway. Sure, I still prefer my sujihikis and yanagibas, but as it was, Super Bread did a decent job. Slicing was fine, and it was still able to do cleaning part as well, although straight blades did better. To summarize: if you have to use Super Bread as a meat slicer, then it will do nicely for slicing, and ok for fat and tendon removal. I suppose the later also depends on your skill with this particular knife, mine wasn't that good :)Usage As A Vegetable Knife
- One of the major tests for the NWKK Super Bread knife was the veggie cutting. As with the other kitchen knife tests, I've had 18lbs of 20 different vegetables lined up for shredding and mincing. I've started with Spring Mix and Baby Spinach, basically bunch of leaves, which are really soft, about 2lbs of those, just minced them. Because of the wave pattern on the edge, push cutting doesn't work too well, and I had to rely on slicing for most of the cutting session. Although, mincing went ok for this part. Still, I felt more comfortable doing the same mincing with straight edge knife, be it a gyuto or a nakiri, partly because later two had thinner edges as well. Next test ingredient was the Brussels sprouts. About 3lbs or so. One of the harshest ingredients in the mix I use for test sessions and to be honest one of the most boring parts of the test too, as usual I have to mince few dozen of those and the routine gets annoying. Brussels sprouts went worse then I have expected. Normally, I cut the sprout in half and then cut each half into about 1mm thick slices. With traditional straight edge knives I still use downwards slicing motion, but I still rely on push part of the cut as well. With super bread knife once the knife hit the board, parts of the sprout between the neighboring crests of the edge were not cut and I had to drag the blade on the board to make a full cut. That didn't feel right and after about 20 sprouts I've stopped the test, because I felt I was doing needless damage to the edge and board. So, if you routinely need to mince Brussels sprouts or something similar to that, then you should perhaps pick up another knife with a straight blade, although I seriously doubt about sprout mincing being a common cutting task for someone. Having those results with Brussels sprouts, I already knife there would be similar issue mincing red radish, which is similar in size and when cut in half presents the same challenge for the waived edge. I've tried it anyway, two of those to be precise, same thing happened and even though it was doable, I didn't want to stress the knife, the board and myself for no good reason. In the end, I don't wanna say Super Bread knife was unable to mince radish or Brussels sprouts. It would. Just that extra inch movement with the blade edge crests against the board didn't feel ok and I figured it was a waste of time, I got the idea what was going on and that's enough for the test.Next batch of vegetables were not to gentle either. First the broccoli, 3 heads, mincing them was quite easy, specifically, shaving the crowns in the air, using fast, shallow motions to slice off thin layers. Can't say it's an approved or very safe technique, but works for me :) Broccoli stems were minced on the board, and although I had to the same drag on the board as with the radish and sprouts, it was very few times and then I just minced stem slices. Again, because of the wave pattern, I had to perform more chopping motions because smaller pieces would end up intact between the crests. Batonnet from carrots went ok too. Same issue with having to make final cut on the board. I did try to use the tip of the knife to slice the stripes of the pieces laying flat on the board as well. That works just fine, except whatever you are slicing with the tip has to be thin, otherwise you need to apply too much downwards force and that is no good neither for the knife nor for the board. The tip worked fine when I was splitting celery stocks into 3 or 4 strips. After that I was just mincing them perpendicularly on the board. No complaints there as well.
Next up, 4 bell peppers. Cut the ends, clean the midsection and finally cut all the meaty parts into small cubes, or whatever the shape comes out, you get the idea. Super Bread really shined in that task. Easy, effortless cuts from the skin or soft side. Waved edge does help here, it doesn't slide on the skin and bites into the medium immediately. I think, that aspect of the Super Bread was the reason all the non Japanese knife folks liked the knife so much. After bell peppers, next one was a fairly large cucumber, which was first cut half, then each half was quartered and then quarters were diced. Job done well. Next up, two bunches of Italian parsley, which was minced finely. Mincing on the board as before required few extra chops, my SWAG would be about 40-50% more chops to achieve the desired level of mincing. However, holding the bunch tight and making vertical slices to produce initial mince was an easy job. Parsley was followed by green onions. Almost the same deal, two bunches, I grabbed them together and went on slicing on the board. On occasion, when I'd forget to give it an extra inch of a slice on the board, I'd miss a piece of two, then I'd pay more attention and it was alright again.
Another interesting part was the raw eggplant, which was also cut into small cubes. Started by cutting the top off, then cut the eggplant in half, and then was the fun part, slicing horizontally those halves. This was the first time I have noticed signs of wedging. Up until that test, even though the knife is chisel edge I wasn't noticing wedging at all. Well, if you are not trained or skilled enough, it's easy to deviate from horizontal line in that scenario even with the standard V edge knife, let alone chisel edges. Still, worth noticing that chisel edge Super Bread wedging is considerably less pronounced than on Yanagibas and other chisel edged kitchen knives I've dealt with. I suppose wave edge does have something to do with it, and the absence of the urasuki, or concave back. Ok, moving on, the next one was the asparagus, and by now I think you can guess, that was diced as well. Fast and easy, especially towards the end, where the ends are the toughest, wave edge does cut through these with ease. Next up, chiffonade from basil. As with other finer grade cutting, this one didn't go too well either. I've rolled couple dozen leaves into a cigar and started cutting 1mm thick slices, but I did have to do the same extra slice on the board or use the straight section of the tip to cut the slice completely. The rolls were rather narrow and without slicing motion part of it was under the wave trough, i.e. not cut.
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