Wire Blade

• Using “cutting tool” as a broad definition of knife, a wire stretched between two tines at the end of a handle not only slips easily through soft or semi-firm cheese but cuts thinner slices than knives can.

Metal Blade

• Often a narrow-bladed cheese knife such as the Swissmar knife, used for both hard and semi-soft cheeses, features a fork-tipped or “piked” blade, which allows the cheese to be served after being cut without changing tools. This knife is sharpened on both sides of the blade for clean slicing.

  A short bladed knife goes with the cheese on a cheese platter in order to cut whole pieces of cheese into servable sizes.

  Some knives for soft cheeses have holes in the blades to prevent the cheese from sticking. Along with the standard thin blade, planes or wires also can be used.

  Semi-soft to firm cheese, like jack or brie, requires rectangular narrow knives.

  Crumbly soft cheese such as blue cheese cuts best with a rectangular wide knife.

  Good hard cheese knives such as the short, fat, tear-shaped Parmesan cheese knife have sturdy pressed-metal blades that can withstand pressure, repeated sharpening and cuts cheese into sliver-sized pieces

  Cheese planes slice hard cheese into thin slices that release its flavor.

  Cheese cleavers resemble meat cleavers but their smaller size makes them more manageable for slicing cheese.

  Larger chunks of cheese and cheese wheels require a two-handled cheese knife.

Non–metal Blade

• Many new non-metal blades incorporating composite materials such as plastic resins flood the market. Among these, zirconium oxide--also referred to as ceramic zirconia--uses materials called “industrial ceramic” that, although harder than steel and requires less sharpening, are ground extremely thin creating cleaner sharper edges that cut cheese more effectively. However, if dropped, this brittle, thin-surfaced knife blade can chip or shatter.