Ómós Digest #175: The bench scraper.
Where Knife maintenance begins. Written by Cúán Greene.
The kitchen tool I am most fond of is the venerable bench scraper. It protrudes from under my chopping board as a juxtaposition to almost all the other tools I own. It's not made in Ireland, crafted, nor particularly valuable. And unlike the beautifully made dough scrapers you might find forged by a knifemaker off the West Coast of Ireland (most of these guys are enthusiastic bread or pizza people too), there’s nothing particularly beautiful about mine. It's neither made of bog oak nor oxen horn, its factory blade is blunt, and following years of use, it has remained in the same condition as I got it. It’s a bit characterless, to be honest, and I have no emotional ties to it as a result - unlike my knives or wooden spoons, which each have a story and are related to a person, place, and our relationship. However, should I be without it, I’d feel naked. Its function has become a part of how I cook. In fact, I have two but to be more specific (and contradictory to what Amazon specifies) one is a bench scraper and the other is a dough cutter. The benchscraper is more of a bench-scooper. Its role in my kitchen is to collect, bring together and pick up food destined for a bubbling pot. It doesn’t have the gusto that a baker would require to punch through and portion masses of dough. Smash it off a bench and watch the thin metal quiver as if it were a sword thrust into stone. Bakers’ dough cutters typically have a wider ‘blade’ than my bench scraper has, with greater rigidity, and an edge used like a knife to peel claggy and dried flour from the table or scrape chocolate into curls if you are so inclined. Although my bench scraper is not inept at cutting and shaping dough, its primary function is to keep the knives I’ve collected over the years in their best condition (I’ll explain why below). Therefore, the bench scraper is a companion. It's the central defensive midfielder in a team of star players. It can pretty much do what you ask of it with moderate results, but where it excels is keeping everyone else in check.