Cuisinart 14-Cup vs 11-Cup vs Breville Sous Chef

Buy the Cuisinart 14-Cup Food Processor (DFP-14BCNY) if you want one machine to cover everything a household throws at it. Buy the Cuisinart Pro Custom 11-Cup Food Processor (DLC-8SY) if you cook for two to four and would rather not wash a 14-cup bowl for a bowl of hummus. Buy the Breville Sous Chef 16 Pro (BFP810) only if you slice to a set thickness often enough that a dial earns its price. That is the whole answer; the rest of this page is why, on the numbers each maker publishes.

The size ladder is the decision

Eleven, fourteen and sixteen cups sound close together and are not. A work bowl is only usefully full to about two-thirds — past that the blade stops circulating food and you get a mince at the bottom and whole pieces on top. So the real working volumes are roughly seven, nine and eleven cups, and that is the gap that decides whether you process a batch in one go or in two.

In practice: the 11-cup handles a double batch of hummus, a head of cabbage for slaw, or pastry for one pie. The 14-cup takes a full bread dough, two heads of cabbage, or a big batch of pesto without stopping. The 16-cup Breville does all of that with headroom, and adds a mini bowl for the small jobs that would otherwise mean washing the big one. Cuisinart names no mini bowl in either of its kits; Breville names one in its accessory list.

The corollary matters just as much. A big bowl is a bad small tool. Dicing one shallot in fourteen cups is wasteful and messy, which is why the DFP-14BCNY’s own skip line points single-person households at a mini processor instead — see the mini processor roundup if that is you.

What 625, 720 and 1,200 watts actually change

Almost nothing, for chopping, slicing and shredding. Those jobs are decided by the disc and the feed tube, and all three machines do them without complaint. Wattage becomes a real difference in exactly two places: stiff dough and long, continuous grinding such as nut butter.

Cuisinart publishes 625 watts for the Pro Custom 11 and 720 for the DFP-14BCNY. That 95-watt gap is not dramatic, but the 11-cup is doing it in a smaller bowl, so a full bread dough is nearer its ceiling. Breville publishes 1,200 watts, which is genuine headroom: it is the difference between a machine that is audibly working through pizza dough and one that is not. If you bake weekly, that is the strongest argument on this page for spending more — we go further into it in the best food processor for dough.

What wattage does not change is the electricity bill. At 17.45¢ per kWh and 3 minutes a day, 365 days a year, the Breville costs about $3.82 a year to run, the DFP-14BCNY about $2.29 and the 11-cup about $1.99. Nobody should choose a food processor on running cost.

Discs: fixed, fixed, adjustable

This is the difference most buyers discover after the box is open. Both Cuisinarts ship one slicing disc and one shredding disc, and the slicing disc is a fixed 4 mm on each. The DFP-14BCNY listing says so in its own words — a note to the buyer that the shredding and slicing blades are not adjustable. If you want 2 mm potatoes for a gratin, you buy another disc.

The Sous Chef replaces both discs with an external dial: Breville publishes 24 slicing positions from 0.3 to 8.0 mm, set from outside the bowl while the machine is assembled. It also ships a French fry disc, a reversible shredder, a dough blade, a mini bowl and mini blade, and a container to keep them in. That accessory list, not the motor, is what the price gap actually buys.

One honest caveat in Cuisinart’s favor: fewer parts is a feature. The DFP-14BCNY has three things to wash and nothing to lose. The Breville has a box of attachments that needs a cupboard. Which of those is an advantage depends entirely on how often you use it.

What is in each box

Read the accessory lists side by side and one thing jumps out: the 11-cup names a chopping/mixing/doughblade, while the 14-cup’s list names a chopping/mixing blade. In practice the DFP-14BCNY kneads dough with the blade it ships with — Cuisinart markets the machine for kneading — but if a dedicated dough blade matters to you, only the 11-cup and the Breville name one.

• Cuisinart Pro Custom 11-Cup Food Processor (DLC-8SY)— chopping/mixing/dough blade, medium shredding disc, 4 mm medium slicing disc, detachable disc stem, spatula, small and large pushers.
• Cuisinart 14-Cup Food Processor (DFP-14BCNY)— stainless chopping/mixing blade, medium shredding disc, 4 mm standard slicing disc, detachable disc stem, bowl sleeve assembly with both pushers; all parts dishwasher safe.
• Breville Sous Chef 16 Pro (BFP810)— micro-serrated S-blade, adjustable slicing deck, reversible shredding disc, French fry disc, dough blade, mini bowl and mini blade, both spindles, and a storage container for the lot.

Warranty, which is where the DFP-14BCNY quietly wins

Cuisinart publishes a limited three-year warranty on the whole DFP-14BCNY and a full five-year warranty on its motor. Breville publishes two years on the product and thirty on the motor — the longest motor cover here by a distance, and a reasonable proxy for how the induction motor is built. The Pro Custom 11 listing does not state a warranty term in its feature list, so we do not quote one for it.

For a machine you expect to keep for fifteen years, those numbers are worth more than a hundred watts. They are also the least-read part of any listing.

Side by side

Who each one is genuinely for

The 11-cup suits a two-to-four-person kitchen that wants a proper full-size machine without a bowl that dominates the counter, and it is the cheapest way into the classic Cuisinart design. The 14-cupis the default recommendation on this site because the extra three cups cost very little and remove a ceiling you would otherwise meet on dough day — the long version is in our DFP-14BCNY review. The Sous Chef is for the cook who uses a processor several times a week and wants slicing precision; if that is not you, its dial will not be used enough to justify the difference. The brand-level head-to-head, without the 11-cup in the middle, is in Cuisinart vs Breville.