I’m left handed and have been banned from slicing bread

I am too, which is why I asked, back on page 1.

For years I couldn’t cut straight, not just bread but generally. I just put it down to me being randomly hopeless. Then I got a left-handed knife, and it’s revolutionised my kitchen abilities.

It sounds like snake oil, I know. The theory goes (and I don’t know how true it is, but) you naturally twist as you cut and the serrated edge is biased in order to compensate for this. Change hands and you twist the other way, so rather than compensating the serrated edge now amplifies the twist, and ta-da, bread wedges.

The sceptic in me (power balance bands, anyone) wants to dismiss the theory as pish, but anecdotally it definitely, definitely works. I can’t use regular serrated knives unless I have a sudden desire for triangular food.

Being a little bit sexist feels jolly liberating don’t you think.

I used to enjoy a good misogynistic rant, then I had a good look at myself and realised that it’s obllocks, I can be a right nobber when I get going
And she puts up with that all the time, patience of a saint she has 😳

Couger, I’ll try one of those, it can’t make it any worse

But that is becuase I want each of these things done properly

Never a truer word written.

I’m the same.

Why would someone not WANT to be able to cut something properly?

Pfft, I refuse to subscribe to your slicing fascism! Freestyle slicing all the way!

I can’t use regular serrated knives unless I have a sudden desire for triangular food.

If you know it’s going to be triangular when you try to cut straight, why don’t you just compensate by trying to cut triangular? It’ll probably come out straight then and you won’t need any of this left handed pencil nonsense!

A friend of ours would refuses to watch my leftie wife cut a loaf because it disturbed her. She asked me to do it, so I cut it left handed (I’m right handed)

and as for baked potatoes

Everyone knows you cut it to expose it’s largest open surface, better for eating and it sits well on the plate.

Are you crazy? You cut it both ways and then squish the edges in so it all mushes up and the top opens up 🙄

You can get left handed pencils? Where, how much?
I’m saving up for a left handed screwdriver….

I was somewhat disappointed when I and her precious grandkids couldn’t have chocolatey toast for breakfast

Chocolate on toast is wrong anyway. Very wrong. She knew this.

Marmalade only please. Unless it’s not for breakfast then jam or beans is passable.

Tsk.

Marmalade only please. Unless it’s not for breakfast then jam or beans is passable.

Or cheese, don’t forget cheese!

p.s I can cut bread but we get rye so it’s firmer / easier than normal bread.

And the packaging that cheese comes in. I cut neatly so that the cheese can be slipped in neatly, the end folded over and it stops it going hard. When Mrs Feet opens packets of cheese, well, I can only assume shes’s used the garden strimmer to open it as it’s left in tatters

Is it a height thing? I’m unusually tall for a girl and have no problem cutting bread (well, no-one complains) and I think it might be that I’m far enough above the worktop + cutting board to be able to control the knife.

Maybe??

Got any short guys on here – can they cut bread?

Rachel

Even now my wife brings up the story of the first time she came round for food, back when we were ‘courting’. Apparently I got unreasonably angry with her for cutting the bread wonky.

symmetrical food is for creeps. if you must eat bread, tear gert big chunks off.

I can’t dip gert big chunks in my boiled egg. They also don’t fit in the toaster.

And what about sandwiches?

I can’t cut bread straightly either – it ends up thick at the top and really thin by the time i get to the bottom of the slice. If i get to the bottom that is, sometimes i can only manage to cut half a slice. 🙄

symmetrical food is for creeps. if you must eat bread, tear gert big chunks off.

I think you’ll find that makes an egg-mayo sarnie a bit sketchy.

I can’t cut bread straightly either – it ends up thick at the top and really thin by the time i get to the bottom of the slice. If i get to the bottom that is, sometimes i can only manage to cut half a slice.

More proof! 🙂

don’t eat bread then

or make your own flat bread

I’m left-handed and also have a wonky right shoulder due to collarbone breakage.

There’s no hope is there? 🙄

5’2″ short here. Precision bread and meat slicing a speciality.

My wife always gets to the last bit of cheese triangle that she’s created and looks at me with desperation. She’s taller than me, so that’s no argument. 🙂

Got any short guys on here – can they cut bread?

5ft5, my slices look engineered they are so neat and accurate.

I blame my genes and my evil primary one teacher (being small has nothing to do with bread cutting!) I’m left handed, but my teacher forced me to use my right hand at school, so i’m never very sure what hand i’d naturally use as these days i write left handed, but use my right hand for everything else.

I don’t care what the bread looks like as long as it tastes nice. I don’t think anyone has ever complained about my lack of bread cutting skillz though.

Back when we were cave dwellers the women cut bread with flint.
This would’ve been even. However, it wouldn’t of appeared so bad on our non-uniform loaves.

As grateful foragers/hunters, we’d of scoffed it down with a lump of burnt mammoth all the same. Then shown our appreciation for the effort of the ladies and negated the use of the club for post meal activities.

Despite the loaves gaining a uniform shape and steel bladed knives were now the favoured cutting implement. Nice straight and even cuts were achievable.

However! During this time,the ladies rights and their role of life shifted. They became slaves to the kitchen and bedroom and weren’t getting the respect and appreciation they deserved.

Therefore they developed a sod ’em attitude.

The wonky bread cutting and the sack of spuds sexual position, was now made standard by women demanding more than orders of food and sex.

In modern times, even though the shift has moved in favour of rights of women. Men still fail to appreciate women.
Therefore the attention to bread cutting perfection has remained.

Thankfully, the sack of spuds position seems to be less popular these days.
Headaches and periods are the easier option to use. As opposed to the you can have me, but i aint joining in gesture, which the laying there and doing owt position, actually means.

Slowly women aren’t the sex slaves they once were and men realise that more effort and appreciation is needed in the bedroom.

Once you appreciate them fully, only then will the bread be cut straight.

Simples!

Is it a height thing? I’m unusually tall for a girl and have no problem cutting bread (well, no-one complains) and I think it might be that I’m far enough above the worktop + cutting board to be able to control the knife.
Maybe??
Got any short guys on here – can they cut bread?
Rachel

My wife is a perfect slicer and is 4’11”. That disproved your theory as it is a big enough dataset for a web forum. Ha!

why don’t you just buy sliced bread?

37 years ago I spent several weeks of the first year of my apprenticeship learning how to hacksaw and file things straight. I’ve always thought it was the lack of this training that resulted in my wife leaving the bread looking like she attacked it with an axe, but I’m glad to hear it’s not an isolated occurrence 😛

why don’t you just buy sliced bread?

Heathen

PS Don’t get me started on the way she hacks at a block of cheese 🙄

She says I have OCD, maybe she’s right 😳

Here’s a birthday present for the WAGs of STW: EvenSlice

PS Don’t get me started on the way she hacks at a block of cheese

+1, although I also get very concerned about the rabid tearing of the wrapper, so you end up with lovely dry cheese 😯

You’ve only just noticed op!

Agree, for the same reasons there aren’t many women carpenters s’pose.

PeterPoddy – Member

The only woman I ever saw cut bread straight was my Grandma, God rest her soul, who used to stand ther loaf on end and cut horizontally! WTF is that all about?
My Gran also was a horizontal bread cutter who could cut perfect thin slices.

She was in service as a young woman – dunno if she learnt to cut bread then

why don’t you just buy sliced bread?

me as well, who has time to cut bread for toast in the morning? It’s as much as I can do to put the slices in the toaster.

I too despair of people leaving cheese packets open, the wife doesn’t even eat cheese she just hacks bits off for the nipper, then wraps it in approximatley 3feet of clingfilm, but still manages to leave atleast 2 corners uncovered.

Then I got a left-handed knife

I wondered where you were going with this but serrated yes I can see that, most serrated knives only seem to be bevelled on one side.

Very insightful post by sharki there!

I’d like to see a an interplanetary flying vagina

hang on, hang on – can’t believe there’s a manchat going on and toys19 wasn’t given the appreciation he deserved for managing to segue in a reference to ‘space lady bits’.

Oh and our bread looks like the victim of what the papers call a ‘frenzied attack’ if my wife tries to cut toast in the morning.

why don’t you just buy sliced bread?

Same. I don’t even have time for toast in the morning. Glass of water and go. Breakfast at my desk at work. Kills 10 minutes doesn’t it. 🙂

TIP: When applying butter to thinly sliced bread, use the back of a desert spoon. It won’t tear the bread.

When I discovered this and showed my Mum some 30 years ago, she clipped me around the ear and scolded me for being ‘not right’. 😳

why don’t you just buy sliced bread?

Because it’s a chemistry experiment not proper bread. (20+ years of flour milling to back this up).

Proof!!!!

Last night I was asked to sort the loaf out by Mrs PP. Even she couldn’t work out how she’d cut it so badly, so today my sandwich looks like this:

Untitled by PeterPoddy, on Flickr

She suggested I post this too!