Thread: Breadboards

My Dad & I made a couple last time he was up for the weekend. We used a bunch of 30x40mm Jarrah, biscuit jointed & glued with the two-pack Selleys glue in the red box (can't remember the name). We made them 400 x 500mm. He took one home and LOML got the other. No complaints so far and looks good.

I'm sure there are experts here, but I guess stay away from anything too soft or anything with a strong smell.

One idea - go visit David Jones. In their kitchen section they have a range of premium Aussie made cutting boards using some very nice timbers.

Good article by George Hatfield.
in "Australian Woodworker" No 104 August 2002
Wooden Kitchen Utensils. page 75.


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p.t.c

Do a search for chopping boards - you'll find some good info on past posts.

Timbers that come to mind that I've previously used include pine, jarah, mountain ash, stringy bark, yellow box, iron bark, ...

As for toxicity, I'm yet to be convinced that any of the common native timbers are toxic in relation to this intended use - dust is a totally seperate issue.

Some may have excessive smells or oils that are not exactly pleasant, but I recon you'd have to eat or lick a fair bit of timber to get anything more than a gut ache and splinters in your tounge

The one I use the most is an old pine board I made in tech school many moons ago - it was simply butt joined with PVC.

As for harbouring bacteria, it's a long standing argument. There are numerous stories out there about wood being the bees knees, other saying you should soak wooden boards in domestos after every use (just imagine what the vegimite on toast would taste like after that). If it were a real issue the dept. of health would have been on to it by now, conducting tests through the local uni's and NATA.

I still opt for a separate raw meat board.


[This message has been edited by Eastie (edited 27 September 2002).]

We had a similar thread on a canadian forum, one member posted this article, hope it helps

CONTACT: Dean Cliver, (608) 263-6937

STUDY: WOOD CUTTING BOARDS, NOT PLASTIC, ARE SAFER FOR FOOD PREP

MADISON: For decades now, cooks in homes and restaurants
have been urged to use plastic rather than wood cutting boards in
the name of food safety. The fear is that disease-causing bacteria,
like salmonella from raw chicken, for example, will soak into a
cutting board and later contaminate other foods cut on the same
surface and served uncooked, such as salad ingredients.

It's become an article of faith among "experts" that plastic
cutting boards are safer than wood for food preparation because,
as the thinking goes, plastic is less hospitable to bacteria.

It seems reasonable, but it just ain't so, according to two
scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Food Research
Institute.

Dean O. Cliver and Nese O. Ak, food microbiologists in the
College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, have found that in some
as yet unknown way wooden cutting boards kill bacteria that
survive well on plastic boards.

"This flies in the face of the prevailing wisdom," says
Cliver. "It isn't what I expected. Our original objectives were to
learn about bacterial contamination of wood cutting boards and to
find a way to decontaminate the wood so it would be almost as safe
as plastic. That's not what happened."

Cliver is quick to point out that cooks should continue to be
careful when they handle foods and wash off cutting surfaces after
they cut meat or chicken that may be contaminated with bacteria.

"Wood may be preferable in that small lapses in sanitary
practices are not as dangerous on wood as on plastic," he says.
"This doesn't mean you can be sloppy about safety. It means you
can use a wood cutting board if that is the kind you prefer. It
certainly isn't less safe than plastic and appears to be more
safe."

Cliver and Ak began by purposely contaminating wood and
plastic boards with bacteria and then trying to recover those
bacteria alive from the boards. They also tested boards made from
seven different species of trees and four types if plastic. They
incubated contaminated boards overnight at refrigerator and room
temperatures and at high and typical humidity levels. They tested
several bacteria: Salmonella, Listeria and enterohemorrhagic
Escherichia coli Q known to produce food poisoning. The results
consistently favored the wooden boards, often by a large margin
over plastic boards, according to Cliver.

The scientists found that three minutes after contaminating a
board that 99.9 percent of the bacteria on wooden boards had died,
while none of the bacteria died on plastic. Bacterial numbers
actually increased on plastic cutting boards held overnight at
room temperature, but the scientists could not recover any
bacteria from wooden boards treated the same way.

So where did we get the idea that wood isn't safe? Cliver and
Ak don't know. They did a literature search and have not found any
studies that evaluated the food safety attributes of wood and
plastic cutting boards.

Although Ak, a graduate student at the Food Research
Institute, will soon return to Turkey, Cliver hopes to continue
the studies. A major question now, he says, is why wood is so
inhospitable to bacteria. He and Ak have tried unsuccessfully to
recover a compound in wood that inhibits bacteria.

The first year of the study was funded by the Food Research
Institute with unrestricted food industry gift funds; other
funding sources are now being sought. Cliver and Ak will soon
submit an article based on the research to a refereed scientific
journal.

http://www.dpi.qld.gov.au/food/2982.html

The End.