Unlike what seems like the majority of the country, I have not baked a single loaf of sourdough bread during these months of isolation. I did, however, spend several months isolating with someone who literally made a loaf of bread every single day. So while I didn’t have to think at all about proofing times or lamés, it was my duty to help consume the carbohydrates, lest we waste food (or, worse, get buried under it).
Reader, I took that duty very seriously.
The proof is in my chosen spreader. In precedented times, a simple butter knife from my cutlery set would do for distributing a layer of whatever I was spreading on my occasional (not homemade) toast. But once eating bread became a daily duty, I began to take a not-insignificant amount of pride in my work. To do good work, one needs good tools. So I started using with these cool Scandinavian butter spreaders that my breadmaking housemate owned.
If I had you at Scandinavian, let me take it one step further: These little spreaders were actually hand-carved by a Swedish friend’s father. In Sweden, butter is practically a food group, and slathering it on crackers and bread deserves special consideration. Now, since bread and butter is also a food group for me, I plan to never go back to my lame cutlery-set knives. Instead, each thing I spread on toast—cheese, jam, butter, nut butter—might just deserve its own stylish spreading mechanism.
Below, I’ve rounded up some spreading tools I think you should consider if you’ve been eating as much stuff-on-toast as me:
I’m really into the idea of myself as a person who owns specific ‘brunch knives.’ The look of these Opinel knives is classic. The cheese knife is also great.
