Knife design for a pastry chef?

S

Steve_p

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Apr 9, 2019
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I am planning on making a matched set of knives for a good friend of mine and his fiancée for a wedding present. He is a sous chef at a high end restaurant and his fiancée is the pastry chef.

I have talked with him about knives quite a bit, so I already have an understanding of what he looks for in a knife, but I have absolutely no idea what a pastry chef would need.

All I can seem to find on the internet are long curved serrated cake knives. Are there any other specific pastry knives? Or should I make a matched set of chefs in a style that I know he likes?
 
A basic santoku is useful to almost any chef. Nikiri type blades are good for cutting things into strips. Small paring size blades are also useful to all chefs. A simple 10" spatula blade is very useful to a pastry chef.
A cake knife is a very difficult task for a hobby knifemaker.
 
Thank you for the input. I definitely think you’re right, the cake knife is well beyond my capabilities right now. I have an idea about how to do serrations but haven’t tried it yet.

My thought right now is to do one German style chef which he prefers and one santoku style blade. Depending on how they turn out and how much time I have I may add two small pettys or paring knives as well.
 
This may sound like a weird idea - but if you can stream shows from The Food Channel, they have several shows that are baking/pastry competitions. Why not try to scan those and see what kind of knives they reach for? Pastry cooking (i think?) is about more than cakes. Tarts with glazed fruit on top will need the berries trimmed and maybe sliced. Bar type deserts will need to be cut into squares, etc. it might well be that the serrated cake knife is not the most commonly used? For sure, stacys spatula idea is a great one - after all, just how often do you see a custom made/handled spatula? (Probably would need low rockwell though to allow at least a little flex)
 
I made one time ago for a pastry chef friend of mine, it was 27cm edge long (10.6") and a blunt tip, he uses it more like an spatula than a knife, last time I saw it it was indeed an spatula as he never sharpened it LOL

Pablo
 
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