I personally hate all the crumbs from slicing a nice crusty loaf of
fresh bread. A friend of mine, Peter Stamos, made a suggestion: put a
cooling rack over your kitchen sink and slice on that! I have a
cooling rack that was bought for cookies, and it fits PERFECTLY over
my sink. The crumbs just fall through into the sink, and I wash 'em down.
My electric knife seems to work fine with this, and the only problem
is that it makes a horrendous noise if you slice onto the metal rack.
No harm, just noise. (sounds like a Meat Beat Manifesto song :)
-Mike