All the Kitchen Experts at Wirecutter Use Shears to Cut Pizza

“What’s the point of cutting with something that really just makes a dent in the pizza?” says Katie Quinn, our resident pizza guru and Wirecutter’s audience development manager of social video, who previously worked as a food and travel vlogger and podcaster. (She also wrote our ode to the Ooni Koda 16 Gas Powered Pizza Oven.)

When you roll a wheel-style pizza cutter across a pie, there’s no guarantee it’ll actually slice all the way through on the first (or even second or third) pass. But the two blades of a pair of kitchen shears, working in tandem from the top and the underside of a pizza, ensure complete separation every time.

Another possible annoyance with pizza cutters is how imprecise the cuts can be, notes Marguerite Preston, the senior editor on our kitchen team. A wheel cutter “will do that thing where it gets off track, slicing little slivers in the process of trying to cut through the pizza,” she says.

Not only do wheel cutters often fail at cutting a pizza all the way through, but they’ve also been known to drag a sheet of cheese (and any baked-in toppings) along with them as they roll, ruining your pie’s topping distribution. That’s another nuisance you can avoid with kitchen shears.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by NYT Wirecutter (@wirecutter)

Have you ever heard of someone sharpening their pizza cutter? Neither have we.

It might be possible to keep the blade of a rotary cutter sharp, but we believe that doing so would be pretty inconvenient and annoying. “Personally, I wouldn’t try it,” Marguerite says. “You’d almost certainly need a sharpening stone or something similar; I don’t think the electric sharpeners we recommend would work. It would be slow and tedious, and I imagine it would be difficult to get even, consistent sharpening around the whole blade.” And a cutting tool that you can’t really sharpen is one that defeats its own purpose.

By contrast, says Maki Yazawa, a staff writer who covers cooking, you can easily sharpen kitchen shears “by cutting through abrasive materials, such as a few layers of aluminum foil.” She also recommends the Sharp Pebble Premium Whetstone Knife Sharpening Stone for sharpening shears as well as kitchen knives. (Editor Alexander Aciman, who previously wrote about our budget-pick chef’s knife, the Victorinox Swiss Classic Chef’s Knife, uses a similar whetstone to keep that beloved blade sharp, as well.)

Kitchen shears also retain their sharpness longer than a rotary blade does. Whereas the blade on a wheel cutter tends to get banged up inside a kitchen drawer, the blades on a pair of kitchen shears are closed and protected when not in use. In addition, “You need to exert an aggressive amount of pressure to slice through a pizza with a wheel cutter, so it wouldn’t take much for its blade to start wearing down,” Maki says. “Scissors tend to hold an edge much better and require less force to get the job done.”

Your cutting boards probably take plenty of wear and tear already just from everyday meal prep. Swapping out a rotary pizza cutter for kitchen shears means doing away with the former’s dull blade grinding down onto your cutting boards and shortening their lifespan.

In fact, as Maki points out, “With kitchen shears, you can just slice a personal-size pizza directly on a plate. Who wants to spend time washing a cutting board on lazy frozen-pizza nights?”

Nobody wants dried-up cheese or crusty sausage bits hanging around the nooks and crannies of their pizza-cutting tool. However, if you’ve ever attempted to clean a wheel-style cutter, you know that fully degunking one can be quite tricky.

Aside from the fact that the wheel often spins as you’re trying to clean it, the cutter “can also get gunk up underneath the arms of the handle that attach to the center screw, as well as around the center screw,” Marguerite says. Although you could stick your cutter in the dishwasher, she also notes that doing so will dull the blade even faster.

The OXO Good Grips shears easily separate into two pieces for faster and more thorough cleaning. (They’re also dishwasher-safe, but as Marguerite says, you will sacrifice some blade sharpness over time if you choose not to wash them by hand.)

“Pizza cutters really feel like a one-task tool,” Katie says, whereas kitchen shears have so many uses.

Maki uses hers for simple tasks like cutting herbs or chopping scallions, as well as for more involved kitchen prep work like slicing meat. Ciara Murray Jordan, an associate staff writer on our kitchen team, uses hers to cut bacon right into a pan to cook it. (She also notes that her six-year-old pair of OXO Good Grips shears is still going strong.)

If you’re still not convinced, consider this: Scissors are often how they do it in the birthplace of pizza.

“The first time I saw kitchen shears being used to cut a pizza was in southern Italy at my friend’s home,” Katie says. “When I made a comment of shock, his response was along the lines of, ‘Oh, yeah. It’s the only way to do it well.’ I gave it a try myself, and I’ve never gone back to the wheel-style pizza cutter.”

This article was edited by Alexander Aciman and Catherine Kast.