CHICAGO — Challenger Breadware has launched its new bench knife, a large, handcrafted kitchen solution for home bakers and chefs at small bakeries and restaurants around the world. The Challenger Bench Knife provides capacity and comfort and was specifically designed for bread bakers dealing with delicate dough.
The Challenger Bench Knife’s nonstick blade measures 4″ x 8″ (10cm x 20cm), larger than most bench knives and dough scrapers on the market. The blade allows bakers to scale and separate their dough with ease. It can also be used to slide dough into bannetons.
“The large blade provides the necessary capacity, and the comfortable Live Oak handle makes working with dough easier because it feels like a natural extension of the baker’s hand,” said Jim Challenger, Baker, Founder, and President of Challenger Breadware. “We spent countless hours designing the Challenger Bench Knife, and I’m confident bread bakers around the globe, from weekend hobbyists to expert bakers, will find the new bench knife extremely useful.”
The Challenger Bench Knife is handcrafted and designed to be used for life. It’s of heirloom quality so it can be passed along for baking unique bread across generations.
“This bench knife is beautiful!” said Nicole Muvundamina, Instagram influencer @nmuvu, with over 18,000 followers. “Easily the nicest bench knife I’ve ever had my hands on.”
Home bakers and chefs at small bakeries and restaurants are constantly struggling to perfect their bread-making technique. While one batch comes out with a symmetrical shape and delicate, crisp, blistered crust, the next batch may be completely different.
There are points in the process where the utmost care and handling is needed to create a beautiful loaf. That’s where the right bench knife can make a difference. Most bakers struggle using standard dough scrapers that simply are not up to the task, being:
- Too short for handling larger volumes of dough.
- Too narrow for easily and gently picking up and moving dough.
- Too prone to sticking, causing damage to carefully-crafted gluten structures.
With the launch of the Challenger Bench Knife, bread bakers now have a beautiful, large, long-lasting kitchen solution that eliminates those concerns.
Jim Challenger, a serial entrepreneur and avid sourdough bread baker, invented the Challenger Bench Knife after years of frustration of not having the right tool in his kitchen. The launch of the Challenger Bench Knife has delighted many of his 14,000 Instagram followers (@jimchall). The Challenger Bench Knife was made in collaboration with the producer of Campbell’s Dough Knife, and the Live Oak handles are handcrafted by Aaron Lucas, an artisanal wood craftsman in Charleston, South Carolina.
The Challenger Bench Knife is available worldwide immediately for order at www.challengerbreadware.com at a price of $75 plus shipping.
The Challenger Breadware company was created to commercialize products for bread bakers worldwide. Jim Challenger gets crucial input from expert bakers around the world to help finetune the details of his products, and he enjoys the support and encouragement from the global sourdough community.
