Chris the Croc | The Serrated Bread Knife

The Inspiration A saltwater crocodile will go through several thousand teeth in a lifetime. Lose one and the replacement is already sitting underneath, waiting to roll forward. It is the most committed set of serrations in the animal kingdom, backed by the strongest measured bite of any living animal, attached to a body plan that has been quietly working since before there were grasslands. Salties are the largest living reptiles — six metres and better, sitting motionless in a river mouth doing an excellent impression of a log until the moment they're not. They're patient in a way that's genuinely unsettling. They don't chase. They wait, and they only need to be right once. If you're going to design a knife that has to bite before it can cut, this is the animal you look at. The Design Chris handles everything a straight edge slides off. Crusty sourdough, ciabatta, a supermarket baguette that's had a hard week, dinner rolls for the sliders, ripe tomatoes, a pavlova if the afternoon goes that way. The teeth grab the surface instead of skating across it, the length lets you saw in long strokes rather than short panicked ones, and the crumb underneath survives the experience intact. It's the one job on the bench no other knife can do. Try a chef's knife on a good crust and you'll either crush the loaf or watch the blade slide off the top towards your other hand. Every BBQ needs one of these, and it's happy to sit in the block until the moment it's needed. Patient. Only needs to be right once. The Specifications [To come]