The Best Baking Sheets You Can Buy Right Now
Baking sheets get a lot of use in my kitchen, whether they’re loaded up with a giant one-pan meal that will feed four to six people, balls of cookie dough for a holiday swap, or vegetables for weeknight roasting. I also ask a lot of my baking sheets — they must be super easy to hold onto (even with thick oven mitts), maneuver in and out of a hot oven easily, and be effortless to clean. Oh, and they need to resist warping.
If you haven’t figured out where this is going, there are a lot of baking sheets out there and it can be tough to find a keeper. So, I gathered a dozen of the most popular and best-reviewed baking sheets on the market to find the cream of the crop.
Now, there are a lot of criteria that go into what makes a baking sheet great. I’ll walk you through it all, but first a quick look at the winners.
Best Overall Baking Sheet: Great Jones Holy Sheet
A favorite among The Kitchn editors, the Great Jones Holy Sheet certainly proved itself in this testing. It was delightful to use; nothing stuck to the pan and cleanup after each test was a breeze. The Holy Sheet had the largest cooking surface area of any that I tested, so it fit more sugar cookies per batch and allowed more space between veggies while roasting. Avoiding crowding is the name of the game when it comes to good browning, so the extra room gave this sheet a leg up with all the recipes I used. (While baking sheet sizes are generally standardized, there are some differences from brand to brand. See the photo below for reference.)
The steel rods inside kept the pan from warping during cooking. My favorite thing about this baking sheet is its vibrant colors with fun, food-themed names like Raspberry, Broccoli, Blueberry, and Mustard. While this isn’t something I factored into technical scores, the Holy Sheet has an incredible oven-to-table presentation.
Specifications
Materials: Aluminized steel reinforced with steel rods
Weight: 2 pounds
Dimensions: 18.5″ x 13.5″ x 2″
Rating Criteria
Stability: 4.5
Performance: 4.5
Sticking: 5
Cleanup: 5
Who it’s best for: Home cooks who want excellent functionality and table presentability.
Good to know: The Raspberry, Blueberry, and Mustard baking sheets are about 1.25 inches longer and wider than the Broccoli sheet. This baking sheet is also dishwasher-friendly and rated for use in ovens up to 450 degrees Fahrenheit.
Best Overall Baking Sheet: Williams Sonoma Goldtouch Pro Nonstick No Warp Half Sheet
This Williams Sonoma-exclusive baking sheet is a technical knock-out and tied for first place, acing every test I put it through. It was one of the only sheets to never warp, it browned foods (when I wanted it to), and kept cookies even and blonde (like I wanted). It proved to be completely nonstick and very easy to clean. However, this sheet was the heaviest of everything I tested, weighing in at almost 3 pounds. This could be challenging for some folks to maneuver when it’s fully loaded with a sheet pan dinner.
Specifications
Materials: Commercial-grade aluminized steel
Weight: 2 pounds and 13 ounces
Dimensions: 18″ x 13″ x 1″
Rating Criteria
Stability: 5
Performance: 4.5
Sticking: 5
Cleanup: 4.5
Who it’s best for: The home cook who wants a heavy-duty, truly warp-free cooking experience and can handle a hefty baking sheet.
Good to know: This baking sheet is dishwasher-safe and approved for use in ovens up to 450 degrees Fahrenheit.
Best Textured Baking Sheet: OXO Good Grips Non-Stick Pro Half Sheet
This OXO baking sheet is super solid and has a completely nonstick finish. It has a “micro-textured pattern” and a square-rolled edge, which makes it easy to grip, even with oven mitts on. Although the texture didn’t create any problems (as it did with lower-performing textured sheets), our testing methodology didn’t highlight a situation where patterned sheets outperformed the flat sheets. However, if you’re in the market specifically for a textured sheet, this one is great.
Specifications
Materials: Ceramic-reinforced aluminized steel
Weight: 2 pounds and 8.2 ounces
Dimensions: 18″ x 13″ x 1″
Rating Criteria
Stability: 4.5
Performance: 4.2
Sticking: 5
Cleanup: 4
Who it’s best for: The home cook looking for a baking sheet with texture.
Good to know: This baking sheet is approved for oven use up to 450 degrees Fahrenheit; remember not to use it under a broiler.
Best Uncoated Baking Sheet: Nordic Ware Naturals Baker’s Half Sheet
This classic baking sheet is most akin to sturdy restaurant equipment. It’s not covered with a nonstick coating, so you can use this aluminum sheet at pretty much any oven temperature and under the broiler as well. It’s nice and light and does everything a baking sheet should do. While it’s not quite as easy to clean as a nonstick baking sheet, it’s worth stocking your kitchen with at least a couple of these workhorse sheets (if not more).
Specifications
Materials: Aluminum
Weight: 1 pound and 9.5 ounces
Dimensions: 18″ x 13″ x 1″
Rating Criteria
Stability: 4.3
Performance: 3.8
Sticking: 3.5
Cleanup: 4
Who it’s best for: Anyone looking for an uncoated baking sheet.
Good to know: This baking sheet may discolor slightly if exposed to acidic foods for prolonged periods of time, but it should not affect its baking performance.
How We Tested The Best Baking Sheets
Bake a batch of sugar cookies.
Make a hearty sheet pan chicken souvlaki.
Roast garlicky roasted tomatoes.
Clean each sheet by hand after every test.
I acquired 12 brand-new baking sheets and ran the same three tests on each of them in an unbiased effort to find the best baking sheets. That meant making 12 pints of roasted cherry tomatoes, more than 240 sugar cookies, and 24 pounds of chicken souvlaki. And most painstaking of all, I wrestled soapy, sometimes-scorched, always unwieldy baking sheets in my cramped kitchen sink 36 times.
How We Evaluated the Best Baking Sheets
I judged all of the baking sheets on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being the worst and 5 being the best) after each of the three tests, evaluating them each on the following criteria:
Stability: For the one-pan chicken souvlaki, I noted any warping after adding chicken and potatoes to preheated baking sheets. While roasting tomatoes, I kept the oven light on and watched the sheets to note any pan twisting or bending. I also assessed how easy (or hard) it was to hold each loaded pan with one oven-mitt-clad hand.
Performance: I assessed the consistency of browning on the roasted cherry tomatoes, noting if there were burnt patches. I assessed the color (ranging from pale to golden-brown to burned) of the potatoes and chicken breasts of the chicken souvlaki. With the sugar cookies, I looked for even baking and noted any browning (which was unwanted in this test).
Sticking: With each test, I evaluated how easy or difficult it was to remove the cooked food from the baking sheets.
Cleanup: I noted the cleanup experience of each baking sheet after each test, including which sheets needed soaking and which required excessive effort or more than dish soap and a soft sponge.
What to Consider When Buying a Baking Sheet
Stability
A great baking sheet will not warp — ever.
Here’s why that’s important: Beyond just the unsettling experience of watching the sheet contort under heat and wondering if it’ll explode, warping negatively affects cooking performance. When a sheet twists and wraps, liquid and fats shift and congregate in certain regions of the baking sheet, leading to burning, scorching, and uneven cooking. In extreme situations, baking sheets can warp so significantly that oils, liquids, fats, or even the food that you’re cooking can spill out of the pan onto the bottom of the oven and potentially smoke up your kitchen. (If you’re wondering, yes, this happened during my testing.)
The baking sheet that scored lowest in the testing warped dramatically right out of the gate during the preheating step for the chicken souvlaki. It never straightened itself out and remains permanently bent. You can imagine it doesn’t get much use in my kitchen now. Most of the other pans warped at one point or another and to varying degrees of contortion, but they either immediately or eventually straightened out. Some still performed well despite a little warping, while others did not. Then, there were the few superstars that never even flirted with a warp. The Williams Sonoma Goldtouch Pro Nonstick No Warp Half Sheet, a true luminary, really earned its name with not a single bit of warping throughout testing.
Handling Ease
When it comes to holding onto a baking sheet, there are two basic styles to consider: baking sheets with handles and those without (you just hold any part of the rimmed border). Coming from a restaurant background, I’m used to the standard rimmed design without handles. I’ve pulled thousands of commercial baking sheets out of ovens, using kitchen towels to shield my hands from the heat, so I default to that style of baking sheet. Handles feel sturdier to oven-mitt-clad hands in a home kitchen, so I tested many more of those. One thing to consider if you opt for a baking sheet with handles: This often extends the length of the sheet, making it a little bulkier to wash and store.
Weight
Another factor to consider when purchasing a baking sheet is the weight. You want a sheet that feels sturdy and stable (and won’t warp obviously), but you also want to make sure you can comfortably hold it in one hand, so your free hand can open or close the oven door. The specific weight cutoff for what will work for you depends on your size and strength (and comfort navigating the kitchen). I tested baking sheets that ranged from 1 pound 5 ounces up to 2 pounds 13 ounces. If you’re shopping in-store, pick up a few baking sheets to see how they feel in your hands before committing to one.
Coating
Do you want a nonstick baking sheet? As you’d expect, that depends. But my guess is, yes, you probably do. Nonstick-coated baking sheets help prevent food from sticking while cooking and ultimately make cleanup a heck of a lot easier. You want to look for a baking sheet that is PTFO-free and/or PFOA-free, which indicates that potentially harmful chemicals were not used in manufacturing the nonstick coating.
While there are some great benefits to having a nonstick baking sheet, most cannot be placed under the broiler. If you find yourself broiling a lot, or generally cooking at temperatures exceeding 450 degrees, you should get an uncoated baking sheet. Just prepare to use some elbow grease to scrub them clean.
Texture
If you’ve done any baking sheet browsing, you’ve probably noticed that most pans have a flat cooking surface, but some have an almost ribbed texture or a pattern hammered into them. Manufacturers claim that the texture helps increase airflow on the sheet and promotes even cooking. In my testing, I found some textured sheets performed well, while others flopped. For instance, one baking sheet with a heavy stripe pattern left ridges on the underside of my sugar cookies (which I wasn’t going for!). The winning textured baking sheet, the OXO Good Grips Non-Stick Pro Half Sheet, on the other hand, performed excellently across the board.
Why You Should Trust Us
I am a professional recipe developer and food writer; my work can be seen in Cook’s Country (magazine and television show), America’s Test Kitchen Kids cookbooks, Serious Eats, Hannaford’s Fresh magazine, and of course, The Kitchn.
The Kitchn’s Best List Promise
We will do our homework, going wildly in-depth with our testing. But we condense the info into easy, breezy summaries so that you can see what we picked and why, then move on with your life. Because we know you’re busy!
