Bakeware (Cookware)

Dry oven heat is the only heat these pans ever see. Sheet pans, cake pans, loaf pans, muffin tins and casserole dishes all sit surrounded by hot air. That means they can be thin, light and shaped for one specific food instead of being built to survive a direct flame.

Material sets browning more than temperature does. Light aluminum reflects heat and gives even, pale results, which is what cookies and delicate cakes need. Dark or nonstick coated metal absorbs more radiant heat and browns bases faster. Recipes often tell you to drop the oven 25 degrees for a dark pan. Glass and ceramic heat slowly, then hold that heat and keep cooking after the dish leaves the oven, which suits casseroles and ruins cookies. Thickness prevents the other failure entirely: a thin sheet pan buckles loudly when it meets a hot oven and throws whatever was on it toward one corner.

Everything else in cookware takes heat from one hot surface underneath, while here it arrives from all sides at once, which is why a skillet full of cake batter bakes unevenly and why a cake pan set on a burner warps. Dutch ovens cross the line in one direction, going into the oven for bread, but nothing in this group crosses back onto a stovetop.

Four pieces cover most home baking: a half sheet pan at 18 by 13 inches, a 9 by 13 inch baking dish, two 9 inch round cake pans and a loaf pan near 8.5 by 4.5 inches. Roasting vegetables weekly makes that half sheet the single most used piece in many kitchens. Glass dishes suit households that bake and then refrigerate leftovers in the same container. Glass is the wrong choice for anything needing a crisp base, and dark nonstick sheet pans darken cookie bottoms before the tops have set.

Press the middle of a sheet pan before buying: a rolled rim and a gauge that barely flexes predicts a pan that stays flat through hundreds of cycles, while a flimsy one warps in its first year. Never move a glass dish from refrigerator to hot oven, or set a hot one on a wet counter, since the temperature shock cracks it. Keep aluminum out of the dishwasher, which oxidizes it to a dull gray, and soak baked on grease in hot water with baking soda rather than scouring, which scratches nonstick coatings into uselessness.