Reusable Baking Sheets: Pros VS Cons

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Now that I have a regular segment in my podcast called Reusable Corner, I thought I would expand upon what is discussed there. So today we are looking at the pros and cons of reusable baking sheets. If you want to listen to the original discussion, it is on the second episode: Gulp It Down!

Ever the optimist, I will start with a pro. They are reusable and versatile.

I will cook anything and everything on my baking sheets. Sweet, savoury, breakfast, lunch, dinner, midnight snack - you name it, I will cook it on there. I find they are great for stopping things sticking to the tray or, vice versa, the tray sticking to your dinner! There is nothing worse than biting down onto a slice of pizza with a bit of whatever anti-stick stuff your tray is coated in stuck onto the bottom. (Ok, so there are loads of worse things but in that moment, it tops it!) These baking sheets prevent that, so your dinner arrives in one piece and without extras.

With my hit and miss baking skills, having these sheets is a godsend. Instead of having to peel cake, cookies, and flapjacks from the unforgiving metal frame, I have a much more flexible surface to work with. And if bits stay stuck to it, then it is much easier to pick them off and eat them! No more having to navigate awkward corners and crevices for those juicy snacks. And no more having to eat flapjacks straight from the pan because you left them to cool for just that little bit too long. (Yeah, I've done that...) It is honestly so beautifully easy to extract cakes from tins when using these baking sheets. Never again will I have to turn the tin upside down and pray - they just lift out.

And the best part is, they are reusable. So I can use them again and again and again. One happy mermaid!

The con to consider with this is cross contamination.

This is less worrying about raw meat juices causing food poisoning and more about flavour contamination. I will use the same baking sheet to make my uber gingery cookies and homemade pizza. The dough could absorb any residual ginger and affect the flavour of my pizza. Vice versa, I could cook some burgers on my sheet then use it the following day for flapjack - will they taste meaty? Of course, the solution to this is to wash them. Which I do. But with anything you cook on regularly and for an extended amount of time, there is just some residual cooked on stuff. Look at your trays now in comparison to when you bought them - they are probably about five shades darker. Unless you bought them yesterday, then they will still be that fresh grey. But no amount of washing will save them - they will eventually end up that universal cooked on colour!

And these baking sheets are no different. I did not realise just how much the colour had changed until I bought new ones. There is a stark difference. So I can wash them as thoroughly as I like (which we all know, I don't) and they will never be as clean as they once were. Sometimes, they even stay sticky after having been cleaned and require a second wash! But, I think that is more to do with me than anything else.

There is a solution to the cross contamination issue: have designated sheets. But you would have to store them separately because the grease does spread between them. Naturally, who is that organised and has that much storage space? Ideally, I would have a box for sweets and a box for savoury - but the cupboard they live in is such a mess, I couldn't possibly achieve that right now. I do desperately need to sort that cupboard, it's the one that every time you open it something falls out. But that is a project for another day and one I will keep putting off.

Storage has made my sheets kinky!

My next pro is going to sound like I am contradicting myself, but bear with me. They are easy to clean.

Maybe I should say they are easier to clean than the alternative. When things get baked onto your tray, it takes soaking and scrubbing and some serious elbow grease to remove that last bit of potato clinging on for dear life. With the baking sheets, however, most food comes off it easily in the first place and anything that does stay stuck on is a lot easier to remove. It's the whole flexible thing again. Plus, you don't have to worry about accidentally scratching off the paint/anti-stick coating with your heavy duty scrubber. If you leave them to soak in the bottom of the sink during the washing up, the offending stuck on item should peel away by the end of the task.

So instead of a three day soaking stint to get those last specks of gunk off your tray, it takes just one wash. See what I mean by easier?

The con to this, of course, is how do you dry them?

Until I actually installed a "washing line" over my sink, this was very problematic. They don't dry well when draped over other items and nor does the crockery below it. They dry best when hung up like clothes on a washing line. Now I was lucky, our sink is by the window. This window has never had curtains as long as I have been with my partner but still has the little hooks used to hold them open. So we fashioned ourselves a washing line out of a loop of string. I just hang the baking sheet over the string and leave them to dry. I can even get all of them on!

Without my washing line, however, I would still be struggling to dry them. I wonder what I would have resorted to, if we hadn't have made ourselves a place to hang them. Definitely not hang them on the radiator - that seems icky and unhygienic. Perhaps on a clothes horse? Or the ones we have hanging over the radiator - so not in direct contact and still benefiting from the heat. Living as we do, those probably would not have been an option for we cannot always guarantee that the clothes horse doesn't have someone else's laundry on it (or our own!). I am confident we would have come up with an alternative.

It's that or become exasperated with the situation and refrain from using the baking sheets.

Desperately trying to crop out the over grown garden!

The next pro is they come in different shapes and sizes.

They come in a range of shapes and sizes to suit your needs. I have rectangular ones for baking trays, in two different sizes so I can match them to a tray of a suitable size, and circular ones for cake tins. I have found the circular ones are also great for the brownie trays. These are a little deeper than my regular trays, and the cuts in the circles to help them fit in cake tins helps with the brownie trays too! (How many times can I say tray in one paragraph, am I right?!)

I am sure you can get even more shapes and sizes if you looked. I just went for the first multi pack on Amazon which was a decent price - as I am still rather dictated by my budget restrictions. In an ideal world, I could peruse all the sheets on offer and get a nice variety. Because they come in a variety of materials too. The ones I have are made from a Teflon material but there are higher quality sheets made from silicone. With just a quick look on Amazon, I have even found some made of woven glass fabric! There are materials to suit heavy duty needs or just regular home baking. The Amazon's choice item is similar to the pack I bought a couple years ago, with added toasty bags and deep dish liners! Yes, it is on my wish list.

Of course the con to this is they never do quite fit the trays.

Be it that they over hang or do not fit neatly into deeper trays, without tailoring they aren't going to fit nicely. I don't mind a wonky donkey cake with wiggly edges, but if you need a more professional finish then you're going to need a more tailored fit. Of course, you can cut them but then that's it, they are cut to fit that one tray. Which is fine if you use it a lot, but then reduces its versatility. There is plenty of variety available with the sheets, but how many are you going to have to buy to suit every need? It's suddenly looking less cost effective. 

Especially when you consider that baking paper can be cut to your exact needs, is usually a 10m roll, and costs about £1. And even with all the variety of reusable baking sheets available, can you imagine there being a star shaped one? Cake tins come in all sorts of shapes and sizes too, nowadays, and they aren't always silicone. Cutting baking paper for a star shaped cake would be much easier than trying to wedge a reusable one into all the nooks and crannies.

Side by side show of how they sit on trays

My final pro is they are multipurpose.

I have already touched upon this with saying you can cook sweet and savoury on them. But they can be used for more than just baking. My best example is that when we make pizza from scratch, our dough often gets sticky after it has been proving. This makes for some problematic rolling. Dough gets stuck to the counter, our hands, the rolling pin - literally any surface it touches. No amount of flour helps. (It's a good job our pizzas taste so damn good, otherwise it would not be worth it!) The fella came up with an ingenious solution. He rolls the dough out between two of the baking sheets. No mess, no sticky - and it is ready to transfer straight to the tray! Just peel the top one off and you are good to go. That one can then be used on the next pizza.

Because of course we have one each.

They are also great to decorate upon, especially if you are drizzling. Instead of your counter ending up all covered in chocolate or icing, it's on the sheet. You can pick it up and pop it straight in the sink, for minimum hassle. If anyone has any other uses for them - do share! I love a good kitchen hack.

The downside to this is they damage.

As with anything you use extensively, they will damage. I have two sheets which are more tear than sheet. Juices leak through them, making my trays sticky, and I have to be very careful when I wash them. But I am loathe to throw anything away that still works. Which they do, for the most part. I probably won't even throw them when they finally tear - I see it as my sheets multiplying rather than being rendered useless. But not everyone thinks like I do. As I have said before, we are a disposable society and I'm sure some would find a torn sheet unacceptable.

This means they will need replacing which again begs the question of how cost effective they really are. The Amazon's choice option is £16.99 for 9 pieces, which is just shy of £2 per sheet. If you have to replace them every three or so years, is that really going to be less than the amount of baking paper bought in the same amount of time? Three years was a rough ball park guess. I have had mine for probably nearly three years and they are not looking shabby yet. But the two older sheets are only a couple years older and once they started ripping, it was downhill from there.

Cinching into the corner

In conclusion, I find that baking sheets are mostly good, but need improvement. And there definitely needs to be some experimentation with the silicone sheets. Purely for science reasons and finding out how they are for you guys. It's definitely not a selfish "I want pretty things in my kitchen" thing. No. For the same sciencey reasons, I want a standing mixer. But alas, they must wait until I have the spare income again.

Current storage

How do you feel about reusable baking sheets? Have I missed any pros or cons from the argument? What reusable item would you like me to look into next? Lemme know below!

Listening to: Neverwinter