That's not a bread knife! This is a bread knife... (or not).
As an Aussie, I can't help but laugh at this scene.. and it's not as ridiculous as it might seem at first.
Our spiders, snakes, crocodiles, eagles, are on average much larger than their counterparts abroad. Also, with huge land mass and few people, many Aussies are expected to tackle bigger jobs... often alone.
Sometimes that needs bigger tools to get the job done.
Am I just compensating for something?
Don't get me wrong, I have three bread knives for different jobs. I was given one to feed the masses in a university residence... so I started with a rather large, 26cm (10") Mundial. I worked very well for all the usual loaf sizes, baguettes and rolls... despite being somewhat oversized for those simple tasks.
My second knife came as part of a knife block set. I needed more knives as I got more adventurous (and had more helpers)... so I got a standard 20cm (8") Scanpan to get me through my lesser bread cutting needs... or whenever the bigger one was in the dishwasher.
When a bread knife is just not up to the task, and you want a bread sword!
I baked my first breads in loaf tins, then I started getting bigger and used Dutch ovens of progressively-larger size.
Suddenly, I had boules (bread balls) 28cm (11") wide, and 25cm (10") high!
Do you know how hard it is to cut with a blade that either doesn't.... or barely makes it through your loaf at all? It was a complete hack/repeated stabbing job at the far end. If I tried to cut from both sides to "meet in the middle", I found that my cuts rarely actually met in a way I'd consider "tidy"... So clean and evenly sliced bread from huge loaves became a bit of a pipe dream. But bread chunks, crumbs and tufts were sometimes... all I had.
Things didn't get better when I got my even bigger cast iron loaf pans..
I love my loaf pans, they get extra spring from my doughs, brown things beautifully, and keep moisture where it's needed during the bake. My first one has a 7L internal volume, roughly 24cm wide, 30cm long, and 17cm high. If you know anything about cutting large, deeply browned loaves, frantically jiggling your 26cm blade just 7-8cm back and forth is awful compared to sedate larger strokes. (No innuendo's here, I promise), but a suitably sized knife does a much better job.
I needed an extra-long bread knife. The problem was... I already had the longest bread knife on the market.
After much searching, it seemed that there was some sort of global agreement amongst knife makers that bread knives shall be 18-26cm in length, and not a hair more.
There were some "bread hack saws" made by crafty folks on Etsy with rather limiting handles that just didn't do it for me. I just wanted a longer knife.
I even looked into commissioning a knife maker, black smith, the friend-of-friend who might know how to sharpen a dishevelled sword for me. The knife maker wanted over $1000 for it.. and the blacksmith, a somewhat more reasonable $850. I'm sure they would be fine knives... but I want it to be dishwasher safe.. and none of these were going to be. The sword sharpener.... never finished (perhaps never started, I couldn't say). After months of hearing nothing, it wasn't confidence inspiring.
A couple of years went by and I'd basically given up... until....
When the best bread knife, isn't a bread knife at all...
I was at a local commerial kitchen supplier and serendipity struck. I was not even in the knife section, but the baking section, and I saw exactly what I was looking for. A 36cm (14"), dishwasher safe CAKE KNIFE!
You know how the right words can make your day when you hear them... the right words would have made my online searching so much easier!
It makes sense if you think about it...
There are a lot of big cakes. Whether you've invited the entire town to your child's birthday party, or invited the extended friends and family of two huge families to a wedding... those cakes are going to be big... and they're going to need a knife to cut them.
A 36cm blade makes a world of difference over the 20, or 26. The smooth longer cutting motions are less likely to crush or distort the loaf as you wrestle with it. You can cut it, sitting on the bench as is, without having to turn it 90 degrees and hope you don't cut your fingers.
Best of all.. the cake knife (what we call the "bread sword" in this house) was under $30 Australian! Yes, the biggest knife was the cheapest.
I've had it for 3 years... and I won't go back to cutting huge loaves with the shorter knives. If you think you're going to make some large bread loaves, just get a long cake knife. They cut just was well as either of my other bread knives, despite what some other knife-obsessed sites will tell you.
Of course, the metal is a little softer (cakes aren't exactly tough if you bake them correctly) you have to keep it sharp, but if you look after it, it can go years between sharpenings. (I've only done a light hone with a cylindrical steel in each serration, and that's been enough).
What's in a name? That which we call a bread knife by any other name doth cut bread as well...
These are the "bread" type knives that I've owned and used for years. Yet if you're looking for a bread knife of a particular size, you might need to rethink simply typing in "bread knife".
This shortest knife shown is officially a "bread knife". You'll find most have blades from these search terms range from 18-22cm long.
However if you go bigger, there are other names for "bread" knives. Ignoring the slight concerns about the nomeclature for this humble Ham.... The middle size is often called a "Ham slicer" (and only sometimes, a bread knife), and these range from 25-30cm long.
Finally, the biggest one proudly declares itself a "cake knife" (but we call it the "bread sword"). These tend to be from 28-36cm long.
Is bigger always better?
Obviously not. The smaller two are perfect for small breads. No question. But huge loaves are simply too much for them.
The extra 9-16cm of the "Mondo cake knife" seems to give enough "blade length for clean cutting strokes, even on the large breads made with the biggest hobbyist loaf pans/Dutch ovens are cut with little effort. Even the thicker crust recipes pose little issue to this blade.
That said, if anyone knows of a 40cm, or even 50cm bread knife, I think that would be even sweeter! (It would hold pride of place on my knife rack).
I hope this helps someone out there. All the best in your bread baking (and cutting) journey!
Ham.