Every Sourdough Freak Needs This German Bread Slicer

Hilary Pollack

A favorite of many an online #breadtok girlie, the Zassenhaus bread slicer is well worth the cash — and counter space

A couple of years ago, I finally succumbed to the sourdough craze. I’d made plenty of no-knead loaves with commercial yeast in my life before, but something compelled me to make my life more complicated by devoting hours tending to a jar full of flour-water goop that I’ve named Doughrinda Medley after the famous Real Housewife. After a few months of baking, I finally started making beautiful loaves, but one problem lingered: slicing them.

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.

I was a little apprehensive when I pulled the machine out of its box — the blade is still big, and looks like something that you’d see on a chainsaw, not a kitchen appliance — but its sturdy build was reassuring. To make it safer, the Zassenhaus slicer also has sturdy suction cups that keep it anchored on the counter, and its hand-crank cutting mechanism keeps your fingers well out of the way of its blade. Once I got the slicer firmly suctioned to my countertop, I plopped a freshly baked loaf onto the slicer and was amazed at how easily it glided through the machine. About two minutes later, I had a fully sliced loaf that looked like something you’d buy from a fancy bakery — except, in this case, the fancy bakery was my house.

Since this contraption feels surprisingly safe and intuitive to use, the only apprehension one need have at all is ponying up the $200 to buy the slicer. That’s a steep price, especially for a unitasker, but if you’re serious about baking your own bread, it’s absolutely worth the investment. I think about all the cash I’ve saved on buying $12 loaves of bread at the farmer’s market and figure that I’ve probably broken even by now. It also seems like one of those appliances that you could pass down to your kids — after nearly a year of heavy use, its blade hasn’t dulled at all, and if it ever does, there’s comfort in knowing that it can be sharpened if needed.

It’s entirely possible that I could’ve given up on bread-baking altogether if not for the Zassenhaus machine. I had already purchased multiple bread knives, including one of those ridiculous bow knives, which didn’t make things much easier and took up an absurd amount of room in my utensil drawer. The Zassenhaus slicer obviously takes up a ton of room, but it’s so useful that it’s earned its very own dedicated place in a cabinet. I can simply pull it out, slice my loaf, and stick it back inside the cabinet once it has served its purpose. If you only have counter space, that isn’t necessarily a problem, either — thankfully, this slicer looks nice enough to hang out on the counter alongside your KitchenAid mixer and fancy knife block. Not to be a total cornball, but it really does give new meaning to the expression “the best thing since sliced bread.”

The Zassenhaus bread slicer is available at Zassenhaus and Amazon.




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