Comments on: Unitasker Wednesday: Bread slicer and crumb catcher

By: Jann Schott

Jann Schott — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 16:16:44 +0000

I had this at one time…got it when I bought the knife. Bread slicer guide is long gone (along with the bread machine)…I still have the knife, which my ex-hubby used to use on the swamp cooler pads for our AC unit in Arizona. I guess a knife against a metal guide wasn’t good enough for him???

What was really cool was when the electric knife would ’slip’ and shave off pieces of the hard plastic towards the bottom of the guide! YUMMY!

By: Summer

Summer — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 20:57:38 +0000

Yes, I am the not so proud owner of the bread thingy above. I was doing pretty good with the lists of stupid items until we got to this one. I have only used it a couple of times (pretty new) so I am not sure if it will live in the house yet or go visiting good will.

By: Margaret

Margaret — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 12:15:17 +0000

I (I being my bread machine!!) make bread every day white and wholemeal, and have to agree that the fresh made bread being crispy outside and so lovely and soft inside is difficult to cut neatly, especially for a half soaked, starving, 15 year old boy!! We use a slicer that came with and fits snugly inside a plastic bread store from Lakeland. Storing and slicing in one and keeps crumbs in check too. Still gets crumbs around but you learn to live with that as the smell of fresh bread every morning is v addictive!

By: Anne

Anne — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 17:50:09 +0000

I have my crumb catcher bread board on my counter where it is used numerous times during the day…definately not a unitasker. It is wonderful for slicing bread, but also doubles as a trivit for hot pans, a cooling rack for bread straight out of the oven (I bake several times a week without a bread machine…lets hear it for 5 minute Artisan bread.) and for cooling other items.
The slatted tray lifts off the base and you just dump the crumbs. Keeps the counter nice and crumb free.
As for the slicing guide, I have trained myself how to cut thin, straight cuts, but I can see how one could be helpful, especially with children. Just make sure you have a good, serrated bread knife.

By: RoaringSilence

RoaringSilence — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 15:18:54 +0000

@rukidding
I thought it goes without saying that the items in this post are judged from the viewpoint of physically and mentally healthy people.
It makes perfect sense to say that a healthy person using a wheelchair is just lazy, while it is an inevitable item for a handicapped person.

By: Linda

Linda — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 12:39:08 +0000

I used to have something like this, but it broke. I’ve got to get another one. These are great for slicing homemade bread. Totally useful!

By: Erin Doland

Erin Doland — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 12:04:13 +0000

@rukidding — If you don’t like the unitasker Wednesday columns, feel welcome to create an RSS feed with Yahoo! Pipes that delivers our content to your inbox without these specific columns. Each week we name the posts with “Unitasker Wednesday” in the title, so just use that phrase as the filter.

http://pipes.yahoo.com

By: WhiteCedar

WhiteCedar — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 04:18:18 +0000

The Zen of Slicing.
Do not guide the knife.

Be the knife.

As someone who bakes bread about three times a week, I find a slicer and an electric knife to be efficient, and utterly consistent in their product. There’s a reason why sliced bread is the standard against which all other good ideas are measured. (Karen in Wichita knows.)

If home baked bread were a once-a-month novelty then I would have no problem living with the inevitable shredded, crumbly mess. If I were a bread-slicing savant this would be completely unnecessary. As it isn’t and I’m not, a bread slicer takes the adventure out of the process and lets me enjoy home made bread the way I want to.

Unclutterer, angels look to you with shining eyes.

By: Karyn

Karyn — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 03:01:03 +0000

@rukidding – Not all store-bought sliced breads are Wonderbread. I buy whole wheat bread, usually from a co-op or our local Great Harvest bakery, and they come pre-sliced. Once in a while I buy whole loaves, but they usually have olives and stuff in them, or they’re for dipping, so I prefer to slice them thick or rip them in chunks.

By: rukidding

rukidding — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 22:36:44 +0000

sigh… after 2 good, genuine unitasker posts the past weeks, we’re now back to un-thought-out, un-researched knee-jerk reactions to bonafide useful products.

Many older people (ie. arthritic senior citizens) as well as handicapped people (ie. ppl w/ 1 arm) use devices like this on a daily basis to make their lives easier. Couple the bread slicer with an electric knife and you have an extremely convenient setup which healthy people take for granted.

While this tends towards a niche demographic, it doesn’t take all that much intelligence or imagination to realize it has a vital purpose for some people.

As far as it having to be used with “homemade bread”… have you not been to a grocery store in your life? Not everybody eats Wonderbread. Almost every grocery store carries whole loaves in their bakery section because it tastes better.

For the love of everything holy, STOP with these idiotic articles. Take some time to actually think about what you’re writing before you put it up. Seriously – these Unitasker posts are becoming Unitaskers in and of themselves.

By: Marla

Marla — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 17:05:12 +0000

So glad to see so many other people stood up for this item. I have recently renewed my breadbaking when I had to decide whether to keep or get rid of my bread-machine. If I kept it I had to use it. So I use it all the time. Now I have to struggle with slicing — hadn’t thought about solving the slicing problem till this post. Thank you — off to get a slicer!!!

By: Kathryn

Kathryn — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 15:08:53 +0000

Loaves from my bread machine are very tall, and often crusty on the outside and very fluffy on the inside (I’m not a fan of dense whole wheat). It takes a certain amount of sawing force to get through the crust, and the airy inside doesn’t support the structure well under this kind of abuse. I could see something like this being very handy indeed. I’m not so much concerned about perfect slices–just not crushing the loaf.

By: Karyn

Karyn — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 11:41:06 +0000

If I were someone who baked a lot of homemade bread to use for sandwiches, and if it really really mattered to me to have perfect 1/2″ slices, I’d probably look to see if a small home-use version of a professional bread-slicing machine were available at a price that wouldn’t be out of reach.

Since I’m neither of the above, I’ll just stick with the merry joy of ripping chunks and slicing slabs that slant at funny angles. Homemade bread is perfect for dipping in homemade soup, and you don’t need perfect slices for that!

By: Anna N.

Anna N. — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 11:00:14 +0000

I’ve been contemplating buying a crumb catcher for a while now. I never considered a bread slicer, although I might get it if it was there – I’m rubbish at slicing a straight line in bread, it always veers off in one direction or another, which often results in burnt toast or something. But my parents had a crumb catcher when I lived with them and it’s fantastic.

By: Heidi

Heidi — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 04:38:03 +0000

Honestly, I asked my father-in-law to make me a homemade wooden version of one of these. We eat almost exclusively homemade bread (mostly out of the breadmaker… I am not Martha Stewart!) and cutting it is a complete pain. And no, a ruler or grid lines on a cooling rack aren’t the same; maybe it’s just me, but my knife slips drastically off course unless I’m using my cutting guide.

I will say, however, that I was too cheap to buy a commercialized version, which is why I was thrilled my father-in-law could make one for me. It’s one unitasker I use almost every day.

By: honestb

honestb — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 03:58:39 +0000

My mom has a breadboard like this, minus the plastic slice guide thing, so it is just a bread board. The slats are all connected, the thing lifts out, and there’s a tray of crumbs. You can’t see it from the picture.

Personally, I slice my homebaked bread without a guide, but I noticed getting a quality, sharp bread knife (also a unitasker, or at least it should be if you want it to stay in good shape) made it a lot easier to slice straight.

By: lvana

lvana — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 01:43:32 +0000

I cut nice even thin slices and have since I was a kid, don’t understand how others find it so hard. Maybe I’m gifted

BTW my sis and bro would get me to slice for them too and I always thought they were so lame ’cause they couldn’t do it right.

By: wendy

wendy — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 01:30:36 +0000

A tip passed on to me by my mother. When slicing a loaf of bread, don’t watch the knife. Focus on where you want the knife to go. All of a sudden I’m making even slices. Thanks, Mom!

By: Nate

Nate — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 00:32:04 +0000

This is one item I would find totally useful. Make it nice and easy to cut slices the right size for the toaster/etc. Also means you dont squash the bread when cutting it. The crumb catcher part I would presume the crumbs would come out easily enough and help stop messy crumbs sticking to the bread and messing everywhere else up!

By: Andy

Andy — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 00:22:26 +0000

I like the idea of the fiddle-bow knife, but I like the idea of some kind of guide that attaches to an existing knife even better. It doesn’t look like anyone sells or makes one, but it might be fun to try to rig one up somehow. A table knife, some spacers and some wire-ties, maybe?

Needless to say, I have low standards for esthetics on my kitchen equipment.