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Home / Cooking School / Baking + Pastry Technique / How to Slice a Loaf of Bread

How to Slice a Loaf of Bread

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Sliced bread that’s best thing since . . . you know.

sliced bread on cutting board

There is more than one way to slice a big, round loaf of bread. But there is only one way to correctly slice a loaf of artisan bread.

We are living in a golden age of bread. Bread, especially the chewy, crusty, artisanal variety, is back. Gone are the dark days of white, industrial sandwich bread: Bring on the crusty, natural-starter, ancient grain levain.

But what happens when you get home from the farmers market or bakery — or bake your own delicious loaves — and find yourself staring down that crusty-brown boule? Here is how to slice your bread right.

You may also enjoy: How to Hard Boil Eggs and Multigrain English Porridge

sliced loaf of artisan bread on cutting board

First, choose your weapon.

A stable, heavy-duty serrated knife is what’s called for here. The ideal choice, used at many restaurants and pro kitchens, is the Victorinox Fibrox Pro 10” Bread Knife. This knife is sharp and substantial, and will easily saw through the crustiest breads, but any long serrated knife will do.

Slice the Bread, Part I.

The goal: Create slices of approximately equal size. Someone who just begins cutting the loaf into slices from one end to the other at this point will end up with small bread slices on each end, and enormously long slices in the middle which probably won’t even fit fully in the toaster.

But that is not us. So, first cut a few slices off the right and left sides, and put them aside. Those are your smaller sizes. You now have the bigger middle portion of the loaf to work with.

Slice the Bread, Part II.

Slice this remaining loaf in half. Place each half face-down, so that the crusty edge is facing up at you. Now, slice downward into slices, at your desired thickness.

Voilà! You now have a loaf of bread of relatively equal-size sizes. Now grab the butter and dig in.

sliced loaf of artisan bread on cutting board

What is your favorite bread? Been baking your own? Tell us about it below.

Filed Under: Baking + Pastry Technique, Better Know a Food, Cooking School, Cooking Technique, Dessert + Baking Tagged With: artisanal bread, bread, cooking technique, how to slice bread, serrated knife

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Abino says

    October 15, 2022 at 7:16 pm

    One of my favorite dutch oven loafs is a semi noknead bread.
    Its a mix of allpurpose white, spelt whole grain,,buckwheat,and oat flour.,
    Adding in instant yeast, little sugar ,ground flax , hesheys cocoa,and very fine ground coffee.,water Oil and salt.
    First rise one hour with one fold at 30 min.
    Second fold at end of rise and placed in a form for the dutch oven,

    Bake in not oven.

    Reply
    • Unpeeled says

      October 17, 2022 at 1:13 pm

      Sounds delicious! Yum.

      Reply
  2. Jeannette Shields says

    April 9, 2020 at 2:00 pm

    Hi. I like to eat-but not make- the swirled pumpernickel/white bread and use in a hot pastrami sandwich. The reason I don’t like to bake it is because I live alone and the store sells a 5 lb. bag of that kind of flour. The remaining flour would go to waste because I don’t know what else to make it with.

    Thank you for your recipes! Another blog I follow, “Once Upon a Chef” mentioned you in their blog, so I looked you up! I’m glad I did! I found a few recipes.

    Reply
    • Barbara says

      February 1, 2023 at 10:10 am

      Put the flour in the fridge or freezer and it will last much longer that way.

      Reply

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