This site will give you the confidence to choose and use the knives and other nonelectric sharp tools in your kitchen. It’s also a reference site that you can use as you improve your skills and acquire the tools that will make you a better cook!

Pastry wheel cutters

These round bladed tools cut through thin dough, such as piecrusts, or simple dough, such as cheese straws. Pastry wheel cutters allow you to quickly and evenly cut your dough into pieces or strips. Yes, you can do the same thing with a paring knife by dragging it across the dough. But if you do that, you run the risk of cutting or scratching your countertop.

Or worse, having uneven slicing. Plus, many pastry wheels have ridges, which give your dough a finished, fancier look. If you do this on your countertop, be aware that it may cause scratches. Consult your countertop manufacturer or owner’s manual for their recommendations.

**A pastry wheel** cutting cheese straws

Biscuit cutter

Pizza cutter / pizza wheel

A hunter’s knife cannot carve its own handle.

Teaching a monkey to eat with a fork and knife will never make it a man.

To engage in conflict, one does not bring a knife that cuts but a needle that sews.

Javier Perez De Cuellar

I am like a doctor. I have written a prescription to help the patient. If the patient doesn’t want all the pills I’ve recommended, that’s up to him. But I must warn that next time I will have to come as a surgeon with a knife.

Emily Dickinson

Surgeons must be very careful. When they take the knife!, underneath their fine incisions, stirs the Culprit — Life!

Knife Skills —

a kitchen guide to using the right knife the right way

Pastry wheel cutters

Javier Perez De Cuellar

Emily Dickinson