BBC 4 French Bread Knife

[dennispc Profile]

Last Monday BBC 4 repeated a programme about a Frenchman who, at the end of the First World War, filmed the trenches from an airship. It wasn’t pleasant viewing.

However, near the end, the presenter Fergal Keane interviewed a woman who’d lost virtually everything from her home apart from a wall clock and a French Bread Knife.

For those of you with access to iPlayer it was from about 48 minutes onward, for others I’ll try to describe it. The blade was shaped like a scythe, one part of the handle was held in the hand, but the rest extended up the arm and finished with a curved piece that fitted around the upper arm.

I can well imagine it being used for cutting grass, but does anyone know what type of bread it was used for? Or indeed, is it a bread knife? I’d love to know.

[jeral Profile]

I reckon the knife was just for slicing bread. It looks to be made from cast iron (or other heavy metal) as a lot of gadgets and choppers were, so it would be hard to balance that length of blade with an ordinary handle whereas the forearm support iron and loop would facilitate a straight forearm & wrist for even sawing motions, and without getting wrist-ache if using it a lot. As the lady said her father owned a bakery, it's perhaps more a baker's knife?

Such arm supports appear on (or can be bought for) some modern gadgets incidentally. Some breadknives have an upstanding handle like this one: http://liveimageserver.dlf.org.uk/mee// ... 106207.jpg which probably achieves a similar objective.

It reminds me of Mary Berry commenting on the baker Paul Hollywood's biceps when kneading dough and asking if it could be made in a machine.

[dennispc Profile]

Thanks jeral, that all makes sense, I suppose we forget that when things were made of cast iron they wouldn't be light weight.

[Stokey Sue Profile]

Like this?

On French eBay as a bread knife

http://cgi.ebay.fr/ANCIEN-COUTEAU-A-PAIN-ANCIEN-objet-dart-populaire-Cuisine-dantan-/270949897537

Most French bread of the baguettte/batarde shape is lsiced using something like the "guillotine" used for slicing paper when we were at school, and I suspect this might mimic the action when used on a sturdy board?