Pizza cutters are great for slicing through pizzas as well as pastries such as lemon pie or tarts, and their functionality can easily prick through the inviting world of home decor where they can be used as rollerblades for cutting through wallpapers and thin decor sheets.
In case you didn’t know, this was how Davis S. Morgan, the original inventor of the pizza cutter in its modern form intended his product to be used!
Anyways, history aside, the fact that pizza cutters are able to cut through wallpapers and crispy items like vegetables and pastries would easily slide the question of “how sharp their blades are” into anyones head.
Are pizza cutters sharp? Are they sharper than a standard chef knife?
In this article we’ll discuss how sharp pizza cutters are by comparing them to the standard chef knife. We’ll also touch on the multi-varied functionality of pizza cutters.
How sharp is a pizza cutter?
A pizza cutter right out of the packaging is just sharp enough to cut through pizza and other crispy items such as vegetables, fruits and pastries (which normally do not give resistance when sliced across with a blade).
This is because a pizza cutter is purposely meant to be somewhat blunt with a reading between 500 and 2400 on a sharpness tester. The lower range is as sharp as a common butterknife can get.
Pizza cutters can be a great substitute for knives when cutting vegetables, cheese, tender meats, desserts, bread, boiled egg, sausage, and everyday items that are soft and aren’t weirdly shaped or stuffed all thanks to the very thin nature of their blade.
Pizza cutters, especially the wheel type pizza cutters, however, cannot be used as a substitute for knives when cutting tough items like raw meat, fish and other tough food items.
It will prove difficult and if anything, you’d make the edges become more blunt.
Also, on many occasions aside from pizza cutting, knives would prove the better option especially when the food has a height, has a very weird shape or offers resistance like a stringy vegetable or soft fruit such as rhubarb and passion fruit respectively.
Is a pizza cutter a knife?
A knife is simply a tool that has a sharp edge and is typically attached to a handle.
If you look at the pizza cutter very well, it fits perfectly into this description. Because of that, we would refer to the pizza cutter as a knife, just not the type of knife for cutting everyday items that isn’t pizza or pastry.
Can a pizza cutter cut your skin?
Because the skin is kind of elastic, a pizza cutter would find it somewhat difficult to cut through due to how blunt it’s made to be right out of the packaging, unless so much pressure is applied which will definitely cause a wound.
If the pizza cutter has been sharpened already however, it would become very easy to cut through the skin and therefore you’d have to treat it like a sharp knife.
What else can you cut with a pizza cutter?
Aside from pizza, there are many more things you can use a pizza cutter to cut.
These include:
1. Crisp vegetables and herbs such as onions, plum tomatoes, bell peppers, cabbage, spring onions, celery etc.
2. Tender meat like spam
3. Cooked meat
4. Cooked fish
5. Desserts like cakes and brownies.
6. Bread
7. Sausage
8. Hot dog
We’ve found a really interesting video on the Internet that shows you exactly 100 food items your pizza will be able to cut through. Don’t miss out on it.
Why is my pizza cutter dull?
Just like a knife, a pizza cutter will lose its sharpness with time.
Some of the ways in which a pizza cutter lose its sharpness include:
Using a wrong cutting surface:
For knives and pizza cutters, you are expected to use a wooden surface as the base for cutting whatever it is that you want to cut.
For pizza, you already even have boxes they come with and these are perfect for cutting the pizzas on, so there’s no reason why you should place them on countertops or plastic surfaces for a cut.
In case you don’t know what happens when you cut food items on hard surfaces, here is what happens.
When you roll a pizza cutter over a pizza placed on a hard surface, the sharp edge gets worn away with every roll or motion. Eventually, the edge which started out not very sharp to begin with, becomes even more blunt and thus would require sharpening.
You cut tough items with it
Another reason why your pizza cutter became dull is because you might have constantly attempted to cut through very tough items such as raw meat, poultry, bones, etc. This has the same effect as scraping, hitting or rolling the sharp edge of a blade against a hard surface. And so with time, the blade will get dull.
You clean together with other items
Also, your pizza cutter might be blunt because you clean them regularly in the dishwasher which will cause their sharp edges to strike against other items in the basket and also the walls of the basket, therefore wearing them down.
You store it together with other items
Storage too can be a factor when it comes to preserving the sharpness of a pizza cutter. When you store a pizza cutter, make sure to store it alone and properly packaged.
You don’t want to toss it together with other items in a drawer because whenever you open and close the drawers, items move around and there is a good chance they brush against the sharp surface of the blade which will cause it to go blunt.
Is it possible to sharpen a pizza cutter?
When your pizza cutter has turned dull due to any of the reasons mentioned above, you can easily resharpen it using a stone.
Here’s how to sharpen a wheel type pizza cutter.
Detach the wheel from the handle if possible, then hold the wheel at an angle against the stone and carefully drag it across the surface of the stone a couple of times, maybe 4 to 5 times.
Then rotate to another blunt area of the blade and do the same thing. Continue in such fashion until you’ve gone round the knife and also feel it is properly sharpened.
Next, turn to the other side of the blade and sharpen it in the same manner. After you’re done, wipe off dirt from the surface of the blade using water and attach the wheel back to the handle.
If the pizza cutter doesn’t have a detachable wheel, then hold the wheel side firmly with your hands to prevent it from rolling and sharpen it as instructed above.
If your pizza cutter happens to be the rocker type, then sharpen it exactly the same way you’d sharpen a knife on a stone.
Here’s a video below showing you how to sharpen various types of pizza cutters.
What are the different types of pizza cutters?
There are basically three types of pizza cutter.
1. Scissors
2. Rocket
3. Wheel
Scissors
This is basically a pair of scissors. Sometimes it could be modified to have a little support at the base of one of the blades in order to enable the cutter to transfer the cut piece over to a plate.
Pizza scissor cutters work great and are very reliable.
Rocker
The rocker cutter is simply a long blade that is curved and is perfect for swiftly cutting pizza across its entire diameter in one go.
Wheel
The wheel is the most popular type of pizza cutter probably due to how it looks and the ease at which it cuts through pizza. It consists of a circular blade sharpened on one or both sides and then attached to a handle. It is used to cut pizza by rolling the blade over the surface of the pizza in a forward and backward motion.
