Well, I tend to be unusual about sandwiches (my children make comments on that).

I like my sandwiches cut on the diagonal. I even, sometimes, make tea sandwiches out of a a sandwich. I like eating things in small pieces.

I even cut English muffin in quarters. Drives my son crazy. I don't like hoagies but if I ate one it would be cut in half. BLT would be cut diagonally. Tuna/egg salad sandwiches in quarters.

I do not like biting into a sandwich cut in half.

Jane

Jane, my mother drives us nuts too. But not because of her sandwich habits. Usually, when we all get together, someone will get a few dozen Krispy Kreme doughnuts, of all different kinds. Our mother cannot just eat a doughnut. She has to cut it in half, and leave the other half to get crusty and disgusting and no one wants to eat that. And leave the knife in the box in order to cut another doughnut in half to eat later. No one is going to eat that other half, just take the doughnut, eat what you want and throw the rest away! I do not know how or why this habit started but I am convinced that the only reason she continues to do it is to make us crazy.

Your mother is my sister!

Jane

I like tea sandwiches too! I just made some with smoked salmon on rye, and cucumber ones on white. Crusts removed and sandwich cut into three fingers.

I cut regular sandwiches on the diagonal, occasionally into four triangles.

Baguettes are cut straight into about 8" lengths for ham and cheese or pâté and pickle.

Panininis are cut on the diagonal as well.

Nutella sandwiches are cut into fingers.

I cut bagel and pita sandwiches in half.

I don't make hamburgers or chicken sandwiches at home.

PS The why I choose those cuts is always about aesthetics and ease/non messiness of eating.

Straight across and I hated that my mother always cut on the diagonal.

Always cut a sandwich made with loaf bread on the diagonal, but if I make it on my nhome made bread it's just in half. Rarely cut a sandwich on a bun unless the bun is oversized.

Diagonal.

As a kid I was always jealous of other kids whose mothers cut on the diagonal. Silly thing, but years later I mentioned it to my wife and she said the same!

Today, it depends. Partially on my mood, and partially what the filling is. Cold cuts will generally be diagonal, but something like tuna salad is straight. Cutting tuna diagonally is just asking for clumps to fall out of the pointy corners.

But there is another practical reason for diagonal: If you’re putting the sandwich into a baggie, it’s much easier to put the bottom heavy half in first and then drop in the other half, than fight two vertically sliced halves in side by side. Especiallly if the bread is from an oversized loaf.

Amy, I would have no issues with eating the other half of a doughnut. Seems silly to me that it's a big deal in your family?

I normally cut a sandwich in half on the diagonal. Most of the time if it is just one sandwich for myself, I don't bother cutting it.

Sandwiches straight down, top to bottom. (Side to side would be weird, can we all agree on that?) DH prefers diagonal, so that's what he gets.

In my family, the last slice of cake is cut in half, then half again, then half again, in order to not take the last piece. If you leave even a crumb, you're not greedy -- lol.

AG, its just that, everyone will have eaten a whole doughnut,and by the time they want another one,the half she leaves is stale where it was cut. If it was a filled one,, the filling will have developed a weird film over the half that was exposed..

Also, SHE will not eat the other half. She will just keep cutting whole ones in half whenever she wants another one, leaving the previous halves to get crunchy. Yuck!

I don't cut unless it is a long sandwich like a hoagie or cheesesteak and then I will cut it in halves or even thirds if it is really long and I know I won't be able to eat all of it.

ETA: now I want a cheesesteak for lunch but the nearest place is over 20 miles. I'm not spending $6 on gas and over an hour to go get one.

Grilled cheese is definitely cut on the diagonal. Other sandwiches, it depends. It is true that it is easier to put diagonals into a baggie, and easier (I think) to remove diagonals from a plastic sandwich container like the ones I used to send in the kids’ lunchboxes. Mayo-salad sandwiches like egg and tuna and chicken salads, yes, they do fall apart easier on diagonal, so we cut those vertically.

On long buns, I like to cut them in half slightly diagonally. it makes the first bite easier!

“Side to side would be weird, can we all agree on that?”

@nickel_kg - Hmmm, that would certainly be another way to address the sandwich bag issue!

For me, it's all about the size and filling and practicality. School/camp lunches, when I was a child, mostly had fillings which would squish out if squeezed. Diagonal, both ways, gave easy to eat quarters held together by crust on one side, but eating midfle to edge squished the filling back to the secure crust rather than out, while prioitizing the delicious middle, so one didn't fill up on crust and leave the good stuff behind if one got too full.

As an adult, I cut to the druthers of whom I'm serving, but for myself, it depends on the bread, filling and size. If one hand can lift a sandwich/burger/etc. I often won't cut it. And if I'm not in company who care, I might eat around the outside leaving the glorious middle to be savored in the end, especially if it's on a roll. I just cut an over-large round sandwich/burger straight through the middle if it's too big.

I almost never make sandwhiches on ”sandwich” square bread, like I had as a child, though I do use pullman loaves for tea sandwiches. Those generally are crusts off, with a different kind of bread, cut into different shapes (squares, triangles, rectangles, spears, but rarely the waste of cutter shapes) for each filling,

On lovely crusty homemade (or bakery) bread, which is is usually what we have, now, for me, I leave some of the crust for the end for structual integrity, and also because the crust is also savorable. But on bread from a boule, which is long, I often just make half a sandwich by tearing/cutting the slice in half first. No further cutting, consumed from cut edge to end unless the crust is really hard, when (given no one watching) I'll nibble it away first, then have some bites of middle, repeat, as I progress to the end. If I make a whole sandwich on two middle slices of a boule, however, I tend to angle the cut through the center, exposing a longer length of glorious center. But probably just because that's what my father did. :)

I had to check to see what I had said before, and I notice that I have changed my ways.

Since 2016, I have changed to cutting my sandwiches on the diagonal, but only when I make pain de mie, which is perfectly square. I have two Pullman pans - one at each house - and so I am able to make perfectly square bread.

I've had a Pullman pan since before 2016, but I guess I was late to start cutting sandwiches diagonally.

I often make Muffuletta sandwiches are always round and which I always cut (since they are large), and if they are huge, I cut them into quarters.

It's rare for me to have a sandwich, but when I do, I cut it into four squares. I don't like trying to pick up half of a sandwich, then put it down, then pick it up again, etc.

I too was jealous as a child when others had sandwiches cut on the diagonal. I asked my mother once to cut my sandwiches like that, and she cut them "almost" diagonally, but not corner to corner. Now that I'm an adult and can make my sandwiches any shape I choose, I mostly just cut them right in half - no more fancy stuff!

The only time I care is when the sandwich is to be dipped. Soldiers is definetly easier for grilled cheese dipped in tomato soup; but diagonal is probably best for French Dip.

🧐 hmmmm.....

I have a small mouth, and I lack the four 'corner' teeth that the old fashioned orthdontist removed when I was 13. I can't open my mouth far enough to *take* a bite of a very full bun or sandwich. I prefer everything I eat to be 'bite sized'. When I bite into a full sandwich I can be sure the filling from the remaining sandwich will have decorated my face. I also agree with what Fun2BHere says about not wanting to return partly consumed food to the plate between bites.

When I was little my mother cut my sanwiches with big cookie cutters into pretty shapes.

Then there are hot, drippy, mostly open faced sandwiches. The pick-up-able-ish ones, I'll cut at the table into bars or wedges small enough. If there's a top piece or it's too gooey, it's knife and fork all the way, no apologies.

I also often make tortas, but I prefer to use telera bread instead of bolillos. I can use either of these rolls to make Muffuletta. I always cut tortas in half across the middle, and I never intend to eat both halves in one sitting.

I've not yet made telera bread or bolillos, partly because I can get them at the market close to me in Cathedral City for cheap, and they are always very fresh. Sometimes I get them when they are still warm, like I did in Mexico City.

It depends on how special the sandwich is. Ordinary just straight across. Somewhat special diagonally cross. Super special diagonally across both ways. The exception is when I am in a particular mood, and it is a strictly peanut butter no jelly sandwich on white bread and I fold one slice in half, and eat one at a time, but possibly three or four of them... with really good chocolate milk. That's a once a year thing.

I'll always have a preference for excellent food that may appear a bit ordinary over ordinary food for which perhaps too much time was spent on its appearance and not enough on how it was prepared, what was combined and how it tastes.

diagonal

Some are capable of excellent food that looks excellent! And sometimes I'm capable of ordinary food looking ordinary. Form and function are not the same thing! Nor are they mutually exclusive.

I do not buy peanut butter, but I do have cashew butter and almond butter. I don't make sandwiches with either, but I would eat cashew butter on crackers.

If I did have a peanut butter sandwich, it would also have no jelly, since I do not buy jelly either or even think about it. I used to make fig jam and orange marmalade, but that is not jelly. I've never made jelly, since I never eat it, but that is not to say that I never would.

Most of the bread I bake is either 100% whole wheat or rye, and I like to make Reuben sandwiches with the rye bread. I always keep rye flour in the freezers.

I made a torta yesterday with bread that I bought, and I have half of it in the fridge.

I especially like hot sandwiches - cold not so much, unless I am camping.

Once when I went camping (with an organized fairly large group) in Kings Canyon National Park, I made the mistake of allowing my housemate Bernard make the sandwiches, knowing that he never cooked, and I normally made all of our meals.

The second day of our camping trip, we hiked up a mountain that had a nice waterfall, with several new acquaintances (from New Jersey) who had tagged along with us because they somehow found my stories amusing (at my expense), but I liked them anyway, and we did have stimulating conversations.

While we were sitting on the side of the very steep mountain beside the waterfall, we started to have lunch, and Bernard handed me one of the sandwiches that he had made. To my great surprise, he handed me a peanut butter and jelly (which he himself had bought) on olive bread (which I had bought from the La Brea Bakery).

I went into shock when I took a bite of the sandwich, and I said to Bernard, "Is this peanut butter and jelly on olive bread? You know I cannot eat jelly this early in the morning!" [due to my hypoglycemia]

Then one of the guys from NJ said he would trade his ham and cheese sandwich for mine (which was very generous of him), and so I agreed.

While we were all eating our sandwiches (since this thread is about sandwiches), I happened to glance up the cliff we were on, and saw a wild animal that I could not identify, coming down to check out our lunch.

This alarmed me so much (having been chased by a bear at a previous park for a sandwich) that I screamed "Run for your lives!" while I rushed down the steep cliff as quickly as I could. Fortunately, almost everyone had finished their sandwiches, but we all threw what was left of them in the air while we scrambled down the cliff as quickly as possible. Everyone was afraid of being attacked, as bears are known to be abundant in that park.

The animal I saw turned out to be a marmot - not as dangerous as a bear, but then one never knows. When everyone looked back at the cliff and saw the marmot eating the remnants of the sandwiches, they were somewhat relieved that their lives had been spared, but still had an adrenaline rush from having scrambled off of the cliff.

Later that afternoon, I happened to be hiking with another group of people within our group, and one guy said to me, "Did you hear about the person in our group who got attacked by a wild animal and had to be rescued by helicopter?"

I knew that I was that person that he was talking about, and so I had to say "No," so that I could hear more of the story that had rapidly spread throughout our camping group.

Most of the people in our camping group lived in Hollywood or West Hollywood, and so pretty much everyone had rather vivid imaginations, I guess including me - but I lived at Venice Beach at the time.

This is my most recent experience with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and so I think you can understand now why I will not eat them.

A few years ago, I sae the suggestion of cutting grilled cheese into 1" cubes, as a topper for tomato soup. Absolutely perfect sick day lunch.

I dont eat many sandwiches but when I do, it’s usually a foldover. Maybe out of lazineness about cutting the bread in half, I dont know, just easier. When I do make an entire sandwich like a grilled cheese, it’s usually cut diagonally. Others are cut down the middle so each half is a half piece of bread with top and bottom crust.

@Lars - you crack me up!!

Peanut butter and jelly on olive bread!

Well, we are not American so my mother had a poor frame of reference when I asked for PB&J in first grade. My step father was German, so we had rye bread at home. He ate peanut butter, jelly did not compute to my mother, so I ate, peanut butter and strawberry jam on seeded, buttered rye. It was OK, but not what I hoped for. I also could not communicate my desire for Oreo cookies to my family when I was in K. I told them I liked the burnt cookies we were served at snack time.

As a teenager I bought myself some white bread, grape jelly and peanut butter to make sandwiches for a trip to a water park- delicious! Mind you, strawberry jam on seeded rye is actually awesome, just without the peanut butter :-)

... before or after cutting off the crust?

Lars, did the marmot toss the PB&J on olive bread back?

Being a NYC girl, I loved going into Saks Fifth Ave for lunch. Never could afford buying clothes but loved their tea sandwiches for lunch. Beautifully presented little triangles of tuna salad, egg salad, chicken salad and cream cheese on date nut bread. Served with a porcelain pot of tea.

I worked near by and every two weeks on payday, I'd go there alone and just enjoy that delicious lunch. I have always cut sandwiches on the diagonal as I hate biting into a half of a sandwich. Plus those little triangles of sandwich is so neat and easier to eat.

amylou, I'm sorry to say, I do the same thing with donuts and english muffins. Always drove my husband and kids crazy. However, I would eat the other half the next day.

Jane

Jane, My mother took me there for tea when I was growing up. Heavenly.

Thanks for bringing back forgotten memories of eating in the cafeteria of my little elementary school. I usually walked home for lunch since I lived only a block away. I can't believe we did that back then! My mom wasn't much of a lunch packer, often didn't even bother to cut the sandwich in two. I started to request the diagonal cut sandwiches, so much cooler than my Mom's vertical slicing. And oh the precious treat of one cut into quarters!! And who doesn't miss the actual metal lunch boxes with all your favorite tv or cartoon characters in relief.