best aluminum cookie sheets

Baking sheets come with or without rims, and each design has its merits. In comparison, several other pans we’ve tested, including both the most expensive one (Vollrath 13-gauge) and the least expensive one (Bakers and Chefs 18-gauge) warped slightly after just one round of roasting at 450 °F. If you cook or bake at all, you should own a solid baking sheet. ... Nordic Ware 10"x6.9" Aluminum Naturals Baking Pan. It also has only one handle, making it awkward to rotate in the oven. Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. However, a Vollrath representative told us that Artisan pans are made in a different factory than Vollrath pans. Both of our favorite rimmed baking sheets are 18 gauge, which is plenty thick to keep them from warping. You'd think that cookies sheets don't differ … “It doesn’t need to be super-heavy,” Alice Medrich told us, “but it needs to be heavy enough so that it doesn’t warp.” A thinner pan will also heat up quickly and may burn the bottoms of cookies. Everything You Need to Start Baking Bread, The Best Holiday Cookie Baking Equipment and Gear, What a Research-Obsessed Wirecutter Editor Uses to Bake Bread. Instead we made sugar drop cookies, which we shaped precisely using a portion scoop. 95 Learn more. Silverstone’s Hybrid Ceramic Nonstick Bakeware Cookie Pan browned cookies relatively evenly in our tests, but the pan feels a little flimsy. Ultimately we don’t think it’s worth paying almost twice as much as our top pick for the Prism. Too many kitchen cupboards house a hodgepodge of clunker baking sheets. After many hours of researching and testing baking gear and kitchen equipment, here’s what we think you need if you want to start baking bread. Wobbly. After talking to experts, testing 15 pans, and researching many more over the years, we’ve learned what features are necessary for a pan to be both reliable and durable. Like the Nordic Ware, it baked cookies evenly to a nice golden brown, and never warped in our battery of high-heat tests. Before that, she learned her way around professional kitchens as a pastry cook in New York. In 2013 we baked pissaladière on whole wheat dough at 450 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 minutes, as well as sweet potato fries at 425 °F for 35 minutes. Many rectangular cooling racks are also designed to fit snugly in a half-sheet pan, which is a great setup for roasting meat or glazing a bundt cake. Steel tends to heat unevenly, causing hot pockets on the sheet. The only surface we would suggest baking directly on would be ceramic stoneware. Also, as Alice Medrich pointed out, “A lot of the nonstick pans are dark, and I find that dark pans get cookies too dark on the bottom before the top of the cookie is done.” It’s better to use light-colored bare aluminum for the same reason it’s better to wear a white T-shirt than a black one on a hot, sunny day: dark colors absorb heat, light colors reflect it. Made of aluminum for even heating and superior baking performance. Encapsulated galvanized steel rims prevent warping. But the Holy Sheet isn’t all style without the substance—it’s also a workhorse, reinforced with steel rods for durability. We love USA Pan’s cake pans, so we were eager to try the company’s Bare Aluminum Half Sheet Baking Pan. skip to main content skip to footer. It baked cookies more evenly than sheets twice the price and didn’t warp at high heat (an issue with cheaper pans and even a few pricier ones). Since it’s just a small patch, we don’t think it’s a dealbreaker, especially given that Nordic Ware’s pans are consistently the most affordable and high-quality baking sheets we’ve found. The pan did buckle in high heat, which isn’t a big deal if you use it only for making cookies. 89 The makers of AirBake promise customers that their cookie sheet will not rust. Like the Nordic Ware, it’s made of strong, uncoated 18-gauge aluminum that stands up to high heat. (Don’t grease a cookie sheet—your cookies will spread too much and may burn on the bottom.). *At the time of publishing, the price was $10. Food writer and Washington Post Voraciously editor, Olga Massov, has equally strong feelings about her preferred baking sheet. A dark pan retains too much heat and is liable to burn baked goods. Wirecutter is reader-supported. “It can withstand a lot of baking for those enthusiasts that get down in the kitchen weekly,” said Adams. And for more insight on what makes a good baking sheet, Christine Cyr Clisset interviewed baking experts Alice Medrich (who wrote Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-in-Your-Mouth Cookies) and Jennifer Aaronson (the former head food editor at Martha Stewart Living and the lead food editor on Martha Stewart’s Cookies, which Christine also worked on as an editor). We consulted with some of our favorite bakers, food writers and cookbook authors to get their take on what really makes a sheet pan great. “The texture prevents cookies from sticking,” she said. We also noted how easy it was to wash off oil and stuck-on potato bits by hand. Some aluminum sheet pans may perform on a par with it, but the Nordic Ware consistently costs the least for a pan of its quality. After making 24 batches of cookies, six pizzas, and many pounds of oven fries, we found that the Nordic Ware bakes as evenly as sheets twice the price and won’t buckle at high heat like cheaper models. And you should line it with parchment before making cookies. If you have a love for baking, you are sure to enjoy baking a wide range of different dishes. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as sturdy as those cake pans and warped in a 450 °F oven. It also happens to be one of the most consistently inexpensive aluminum pans we’ve found in our years of research. In our testing, however, this pan overly browned the honey florentines. “I stand by one sheet pan and one sheet pan alone,” said food writer and cookbook author Eric Kim. “If you go to a cookie party with home bakers, you’re going to get a lot of cookies that are burned on the bottom and underdone on top,” baker and cookbook author Alice Medrich told us, pointing to the prevalence of low-quality pans. Free shipping on orders of $35+ or same-day pick-up in store. It also has a rim on only one side, making it hard to maneuver in the oven and less versatile than a rimmed baking sheet. Simple is better All products and services featured are independently selected by Forbes Shopping contributors and editors. In our testing, this two-handled sheet was easy to rotate in the oven, capable of baking cookies evenly, and simple to clean. The metal is also soft enough that utensils could scratch the surface a bit, but that’s the case with all of the pans we tested. 8,328 reviews scanned Powered by Trending Searches Chromebooks Steam Irons Steam Mops Metal Detectors Powered by It was a hair wider than the tested sheet pans, too, and barely fit in our oven. “I actually bought a couple of half sheets … They’re good for little things like toasting nuts or baking a few pieces of fish, and they’re easier to wrap up and fit in your fridge. We have a few tricks for preventing and removing such stains below under Care and maintenance. However, different dishes… Most manufacturers advise against putting bare aluminum pans in the dishwasher because doing so can tarnish the metal, so it’s important that they clean up relatively easily. However, of the three rimless sheets we tested, the Vollrath was the easiest to use because its two handled ends were better at preventing parchment from sliding than the single handle on each of the other rimless pans. When you make a purchase through links on this page, we may earn a commission. Nordic Ware. Williams Sonoma’s pan solves that problem once and for all. 12. Here are the best baking sheets: Best overall: Nordic Ware Aluminum Baker's Half Sheet; Best set: Wilton 3-Piece Cookie Pan Set; Best rimless: AirBake Nonstick Cookie Sheet; Best high-end: … The best pans we’ve tested have all been simple, bare aluminum baking sheets, which rarely cost more than $20 (and usually less). The cooking dimensions of this phenomenal pan is a… It tends to be a little more expensive than our picks, however, and we also noticed that most of the negative reviews on Amazon complained of pans arriving dented. Baking on a layer of parchment will keep your pans spotless and create a nonstick surface (as well as a small amount of insulation) for your cookies. To test the latter, we always bake cookies, because they require some precision and are quick to show hot spots. Always finish by washing the pan with hot, soapy water. Better to get the Nordic Ware, if you can. We believe the Nordic Ware Natural Aluminum Commercial Baker’s Half Sheet is the very best for baking cookies, for most people. Artisan pans are made of a sturdy 18-gauge aluminum, the same thickness as our top pick. Cook’s Illustrated recommends the Norpro Heavy Gauge Aluminum Jelly Roll Pan, but it didn’t have higher user reviews than other pans we decided to test. For each test, we baked one sheet pan at a time and placed it on the middle oven rack. You know the kind. Marguerite Preston, who worked on the 2018 update to this guide, is Wirecutter’s kitchen editor and a former professional baker. We love these and think they’re useful to have in addition to the ½ sheet size. Their surface is ultra smooth, which promotes even baking and facilitates easy transfer from baking sheet to cooling rack. Parchment paper that’s 12 inches wide should fit directly into a sheet pan. When pulling sheets like the Vollrath from the oven, you have to be careful that the parchment paper doesn’t slide right off onto the oven rack. You need one for baking cookies of course, but it’s also great for roasting vegetables, making pizzas, toasting nuts, catching drips from a pie as it bakes, or cooking a quick sheet pan dinner. Rimless cookie sheets in general are more awkward to maneuver than rimmed sheet pans. 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