My most memorable kitchen injury was at the hands of a too-dull bread knife and a sourdough loaf, and I’ve been skittish about slicing bread since. I’ll spare you the gory details, but suffice it to say that the loaf’s thick skin was too much for my crappy knife, and the tops of my pointer and middle fingers paid the price. As such, I’ve become nervous around bread knives, which has resulted in uneven, wobbly slices that weren’t great for making sandwiches or toasting. Then, I started seeing videos of the Zassenhaus bread slicing machine all over my TikTok For You page.
A favorite of many an online sourdough girlie, the Zassenhaus bread slicer has actually been around for more than 100 years. Zassenhaus is a popular producer of kitchen products and other home goods in Germany, and according to the company, its bread slicers have been popular in homes since as early as 1904. Bread slicing machines were common in Europe for decades, but they eventually went out of production in the 1980s as more and more people started buying bread instead of baking it themselves. Plus, these machines were also pretty dangerous, involving big, guillotine-style blades that could easily take out a fingertip if the user wasn’t careful.
