Perhaps simplistic if you have much kitchen experience. This is, however, a class to cover the basics.
I disagree with the instructor over the value/versatility of a serrated blade for fruit tomatoes and such. If you're keeping your chef's knife sharp, it will do the job easier and better than the serrated blade for most users. Certainly individual taste varies as shown by the instructors recommendation.
I agree with him on the basic 3 knives a cook needs: Chef's, Bread/Serrated Utility and a paring knife. I'd opt for a petty or utility blade before a boning knife personally. And your general home cook would probably get more mileage from a petty compared to a boning knife as well.
My beef with serrated blades is that they're chisel ground, meaning flat on one side and angled on the other to meet and form the edge. On a knife a chisel grind wanders or steers in the cut. The denser the material, the more pronounced the steering effect is. You can compensate for it with practice, but it's a hassle compared to a sharp chef's knife. On bread and cakes and such, it's not such a big deal as that material is fairly soft. Also serrated blades require somewhat specialized equipment to sharpen and some types can't be sharpened at all.
MAC makes a bread knife with a conventional V grind, but I've not used one to have an opinion of it.
At the end, he demonstrates a simple trick on a ceramic cup for touching up a blade if you lack equipment. He's not wrong, but I want to emphasize you find one with the finest smoothest texture or you'll probably do more harm than good. Similarly, there's an interesting bit in Spyderco's Sharpmaker instruction video where Sal Glesser (owner of Spyderco) shows sharpening on a non-glazed large clay pot just to show what can be done.
At the 3:50 mark in this video, Mr. Glesser shows that technique.
I'd have liked some more discussion of profiles, steels, and such. So let me give you some links for some of these concepts.
French vs German knife profiles. You're probably more exposed to the German profile than the French or the derived Japanese profile.
Gyuto- the Japanese Chef's knife
The Kitchen Knife Forums sticky topics This is a set of information that may be deeper than you ever wanted to know, but offers a good jumping off point it you want that kind of information. Steel, design, terminology, makers and more.
On the other hand, it was refreshing that he skipped over forging vs stamping, bolsters, rivets, full tangs and such. Good knives can be made with or without those things. I do have a point i want to make however. Full height blade bolsters. I do not like these. This picture from my Henkels Chef knife should exhibit my issue.
Notice that where the edge meets the bolster that the edge has worn up the knife from sharpening. The bolster now drops lower than the edge. This means that my full edge does not make contact with the board so things don't get cut all the way through. Now, yes, I can grind that down or have it ground down. But I shouldn't have to. The design itself is poor.
With that close up view, it seems that whole edge could use some work. It has been some time since I used or sharpened that blade.
And some links on the the disputable issues.
Forged vs. Stamped This page has some good photos of knives at different stages of forging and stamping. I link it for the discussion of method, not their conclusion. I disagree with the conclusion that stamping is automatically inferior. Many high grade particle metallurgy steels can be stamped or laser cut into great knives of equal or better quality than mass produced forged blades.
Full Tang vs. Stick Tang via the Kitchen Knife Forum discussion of the topic and a useful knife anatomy link showing some diagrams of the designs as well. The rivet issue is part of this discussion actually. My Henkel's chef knife does not have a visible tang or rivets but it's a decent knife. I'd choose a gyuto if I were to spend that much in todays market.
Bolsters or No Bolster Zknives discusses forged/stamped, but the last half discusses the bolster issue. Bolsters can be done to not interfere with the sharpening of the blade. If you like them, great, if not, that's great too.
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