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We have stacks of them that we use every day for obvious tasks like baking cookies or roasting oven fries or root vegetables. More unusually, we use baking sheets for sorting dried beans or spreading out cooked rice or pasta to cool before making salads.
We baked our way through jelly roll cakes and dozens of sugar cookies and then roasted 30 pounds of chicken thighs and more parsnips than anyone should ever have to look at. For each recipe, we examined how evenly foods browned across the surface of the pan, as well as how cleanly they released.
Throughout testing, we kept a close eye on warping and evaluated how comfortable each pan felt when loaded with heavy foods. Even more damning was that this irregularly sized pan wasn’t compatible with our favorite wire cooling rack.
As a result, some parsnips sizzled in a deep layer of oil, while others never made contact with the fat and emerged from the oven dry and leathery. The combination of expanding and contracting areas on a single pan creates a sort of twisting effect.
That’s what happened to the Fat Radio’s Properties Jelly Roll Pan: It became dramatically warped and stayed that way, which contributed to its last-place ranking. Their cooking surfaces were the right size for a wire rack to fit snugly, and both boasted straighter, taller sides that contained food and offered us a good grip.
The inexpensive Nordic Ware Baker’s Half Sheet was slightly sturdier, which gave it the edge over our old favorite from Tolerate. Setting a wire rack inside a baking sheet promotes air circulation, encouraging crisping and preventing sogginess when roasting or broiling meats.
We also rated their handling, strength, and resistance to warping and measured the dimensions of their cooking surfaces. HANDLING: To test comfort and ease of use, we fitted each sheet with a wire rack, prepared a mock roast (placing a 5-pound bag of flour atop the rack and 1/2 cup of water underneath it), and did a lap around the test kitchen.
Add to Cart Regular Price: $67.95 1The Swiss Roll like the one pictured on the left is not as popular as it should be being more of an English cake than Australian.
The Swiss roll pan or tray however is a mainstay in many kitchens both homely and commercial. Great for cooking cookies, biscuits, reheating food, grilling and broiling.
The key to a good cookie tray or Swiss roll pan is a bit of weight. Too thin and the bend and warp as well as create hot spots so your cookies or cakes don't cook evenly.
That’s why I decided to put a bunch of baking pans to the test. But for now, let’s focus on the best baking pans (and the worst) that I’ve meticulously tested.
I made a batch of my Ultimate Chocolate Chip cookie dough. To me, it yielded the perfect Goldilocks batch of cookies which were wonderfully golden brown.
This is the basic type of pan we used in culinary school, just the full sized versions. I use these pans every single week, sometimes daily, for both sweet and savory preparations.
I always use the most straight forward and basic equipment possible, like these unlined sheet pans. I don’t want to skew or warp my baking results because I’m using different or high-end equipment that most of you won’t have.
I’d recommend the Ox Good Grips Pro Half Sheet Pan. It’s ceramic-reinforced with a two-layer coating for easy food release while protecting against scratching, staining and corrosion.
You can see from the back of the cookie on the right that it’s also micro-textured with a non-stick pattern to minimize surface contact and increases airflow for an even baking. I’m thinking this makes the pan bake more quickly, so that’s another reason why these cookies browned more than the unlined aluminum.
I share trusted baking recipes your friends will LOVE alongside insights into the science of sweets. I'm a professionally trained chef, cookbook author, and cookie queen.
Discover how to turn your biggest cookie flops into WINS by mastering the sweet science of baking. Beautiful, hard copy, full color, photos of every recipe so you know EXACTLY how your cookies should look.
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