Our top picks guarantee even baking, quick release, and easy cleanup.
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Food & Wine / Sarah Karnasiewicz
A flawless batch of cookies depends on the quality of your recipe and your pan. With the wrong baking sheet, your results can be undercooked or overcooked and hard to remove. It could also make cleanup a real chore, as you’re forced to put in some elbow grease to scrape off any bits clinging to the surface. A great cookie sheet, on the other hand, is one you can rely on for consistent results — goods that effortlessly slide off the pan and are cooked evenly. To find the best of the best, we tested 19 cookie sheets, evaluating each one’s durability, performance, cleanup, and overall value.
This baking sheet delivers on performance, feels good to handle, and proves a cinch to clean by hand.
The pan is not dishwasher-safe.
We gave this baking sheet from Nordic Ware the highest scores across categories. We liked its wall height and rolled edges, which let us get it in and out of the oven easily even with mitts on. It required minimal scrubbing, and we found that it retained a nice shine even after several uses. Nordic Ware doesn’t state if it’s broiler-safe, but during our tests, the pan didn’t change shape when placed in the oven at 475°F for 20 minutes. Plus, one of our editors has owned it for years and said it hasn’t warped at all. Overall, we believe this is the best baking sheet for every home cook and gets the job done right, whether you’re roasting vegetables, baking cookies, or cooling cooked grains.
Food & Wine / Riddley Gemperlein umbrella
Food & Wine / Lindsay Owens
It has convenient side handles, withstands heat up to 550°F, and features a nonstick surface for easy removal.
The stainless steel handles get very hot.
Earning perfect scores in our assessment, this baking sheet may be more expensive than other models, but we found it well worth the money for its practical design and durability in high heat. The pan's nonstick ceramic coating lets cookies and roasted vegetables glide off the surface, with very few crumbs left behind when we baked cookies. It's also a breeze to clean, though it's not meant for the dishwasher. The stainless steel handles get very hot in the oven, so it’s crucial to have quality oven mitts for protection. That said, the handles are easy to grab even with thick mitts on.
Food & Wine / Bridget Degnan
With these cookie sheets, you’ll enjoy even cooking and easy cleaning — all at a particularly attractive price since it’s a two-pack.
The pans’ thickness means things may take longer to cook.
This baking sheet set fulfills its promise of being nonstick even with those distinct grooves on its surfaces. In our tests, the cookies slid right off the pan after cooling down; the bottoms were perfectly golden brown and the tops were an even color. It was the same story with the potato wedges. The pan has tall sides that prevent food from spilling out or falling off, and which gave us a firm grip for moving it in and out of the oven. This pan is on the thicker side, so you may find that food takes longer to cook on it. Keep that in mind when checking your baking times; you may have to add a couple of minutes.
Food & Wine / Bailey Fink
Coming in a variety of vibrant colors, this baking sheet is a winner in terms of looks and in performance.
Its larger size means it may not be suitable for smaller kitchens.
Who says your cookie sheet has to look boring? Veering from standard silver and black, these baking pans come in bright colors, including pinkish-red, cobalt blue, and mustard yellow. The positives go beyond aesthetics, though. It feels sturdy and durable. We were impressed with how perfectly crispy the cookies and potatoes turned out. Both batches were able to glide right off the pan. One thing to note is that the pan is on the larger side, so we recommend keeping that in mind if you’re working with a smaller kitchen or sink. That being said, it’s the perfect size for large batches of food.
Food & Wine / Rachel Lee
This pan is ideal for sheet cakes and gives vegetables a golden crisp.
It's a great sheet pan but only worth the investment if you cook a lot.
With its angled, raised edges and weighty, oversized handles, this versatile baking sheet properly contains batters and liquids for rolled cakes, bars, and more. It’s suitable for baked goods, roasted vegetables, potato wedges (with very crispy results), roasted chicken, pan pizzas, and sheet cakes. But whatever you decide to make it in, you can expect uniform results and easy cleaning afterward. It's on the pricier side, but we stand behind its value as a pan that's built to last, especially if you cook a lot. “It's a superior sheet pan that helped me achieve very crispy foods and is built to last.”
It’s ideal for anyone cooking for many people, and you can count on foods cooking evenly without sticking to the pan.
Because of the baking sheet’s bigger size, a wire rack could slide around.
At 21 x 15 inches, this pan is an excellent choice for anyone who makes a lot of sheet pan dinners or meal preps for the week. It’s not unwieldy for its large size, but if you want to use a standard wire rack on top of the sheet, it might slide around. While it doesn't have a nonstick coating, non-porous aluminum does resist sticking, and the cookies and potato wedges we baked released very easily. Along with its flawless removal, we were happy with its even browning. Another plus is how easy it is to hold onto with its rolled edges and gently angled walls.
Food & Wine / Riddley Gemperlein umbrella
Based on our tests, we chose the Nordic Ware Naturals Baker's Half Sheet as our overall favorite because it offered perfect performance and easy handling. It’s an excellent combination of quality baking results, a reasonable price, and maneuverability.
We assessed 19 baking sheets by baking cookies from prepared cookie dough and baking homemade potato wedges. With the former, they examined how much the cookies spread, how dark or crisp the bottoms were, and how simple it was to remove the cookies from the sheet. During the latter, we noted how easy or not it was to flip the wedges during cooking and then release them from the pan once finished. In a third test, they inspected whether or not the baking sheet warped in an oven heated to 475°F. Throughout these processes, we observed how easy it was to handle the baking sheet and then clean it by hand. Based on durability, performance, ease of cleaning, and value, we rated each pan from one to five, with five being the highest score.
Generally, baking sheets fall into two categories — rimmed and unrimmed — with further variations in material and design features. While some professional bakers swear by unrimmed sheets for their superior air circulation and simple design, most home bakers will find rimmed baking sheets more practical. Thanks to their spillproof edges, rimmed baking sheets are serious multitaskers: Just as handy for roasting root veggies, toasting nuts, baking chicken, and supporting a deep dish pizza as they are for turning out perfect sheet cakes and chocolate chip cookies. Place a wire cooling rack inside one, and you have an easy-to-clean setup for draining fried foods and broiling cuts of meat, as well as cooling and frosting cupcakes and cookies.
Whether you choose a rimmed model or an unrimmed one, a nonstick surface or a natural one, a good baking sheet should heat up efficiently and quickly without twisting or warping, yield baked goods that are even and tender, and clean up easily without sticking or scratching.
While the terms "baking sheet" and "cookie sheet" are often used interchangeably, there are considerable differences between the two. Baking sheets have rimmed edges and are usually about 13 by 18 inches — a dimension known as a half-sheet pan and fit perfectly on most oven racks with just enough room around the edges for even air circulation. The workhorses of a commercial kitchen, rimmed half sheets are suitable for baking cookies, pastries, shortbreads, sheet cakes, roasted vegetables, meat, and toasted nuts.
Cookie sheets feature flat edges with small lips on one or two sides that act as handles and assist with maneuvering and gripping. Their large, flat surface area accommodates big batches of cookies and allows for graceful pan rotation in the oven. But versatility is not their strong suit: Without four rimmed edges to contain spills and crumbs, many other tasks — from roasting olive oil-tossed veggies to toasting nuts or breadcrumbs — are out of their reach.
What is the best type of cookie sheet? Uncoated aluminum is typically the top choice for professionals due to its durability, high-heat conductivity, and efficiency. Fast to heat up, aluminum is also quick to cool down, which helps prevent burns and reduces the wait time between getting batches in the oven if you are reusing the same pan. While it is primarily a cosmetic concern, aluminum's light color can be prone to staining; however, slipping a sheet of parchment or a silicone baking mat onto the pan before baking is a quick and easy way to expedite cleanup and prolong its life.
Whichever type of pan you choose, other vital factors to consider are thickness and finish (natural or nonstick). A baking sheet's relative heft is something you can test fairly accurately by touch, but if you want to double-check the thickness, the specification to look for is "gauge." For instance, most of our favorite picks fell in the 10-18 gauge range. (Note that gauge is a retrogressive scale, meaning the higher numbers indicate lower thickness.) Gauge is important and not just because a sturdy pan feels good in the hand. Thinner pans are more likely to warp in high heat (which can lead to unevenly cooked or slumped results) and burn the underside of cookies before the tops can thoroughly brown.
Nonstick baking sheets can be convenient when it comes to cleanup, but they come with a few performance caveats. In general, because of their slickness, these sheets yield cookies that are flatter and more spread out, with smoother, less textured bottoms. Also, because nonstick pans usually have darker gray finishes, they're apt to bake batches more quickly than their lighter, natural aluminum counterparts. In other words, keep a close eye on the time when you're using them.
Conversely, insulated cookie sheets, which work with a layer of air sandwiched between two sheets of metal, present some of the opposite issues. Because insulated sheets are slow to warm up, they can result in bake times that run considerably longer than recipes indicate. Their gentle heat conduction tends to produce cookies with edges and bottoms that are evenly browned but not particularly crunchy or crispy. Those properties may be just the ticket if you're working with delicate cookies, like meringues, which are at their best when slowly baked and pale.
A cookie sheet is a flat, rectangular pan designed for baking cookies. You can also use cookie sheets for roasting vegetables, toasting nuts, and heating food in the oven. A typical cookie sheet, however, won’t work for liquid-based foods like cakes, as the batter will most likely spill over the sides.
Baking sheets and cookie sheets are not the same. Baking sheets have raised edges on all four sides, while cookie sheets have a small lip on one or two sides to help with handling. Baking sheets can be used for cookies.
Like most good baking tools and equipment, in general, you should be able to wash your baking sheet using hot water, a standard sponge, and some dish soap. To deal with more stubborn messes, let your baking sheet soak for 30 minutes to an hour in a mixture of baking soda and vinegar before scrubbing. If you have a baking sheet with a nonstick coating, don’t use anything abrasive, like steel wool, for scrubbing since that can destroy the coating. Even if your cookie sheet says it’s dishwasher safe, we recommend handwashing to best preserve their condition.
You have a few different options for greasing a baking sheet. One way is to put some butter or shortening on a paper towel and rub a light layer on the surface. If your butter or shortening is soft, you can also use a pastry brush to spread it across the baking sheet. Alternatively, you can grease your baking sheet with a nonstick spray. There’s no need to grease your pan when using parchment paper since it already has a nonstick surface.
A baking sheet can warp as the metal on different parts of it expands at different rates when it is heated up. This can lead to that distinct “pop” sound when a corner slants upward. Heavier baking sheets are less likely to twist than thin, lightweight baking sheets, and rolled edges help prevent a pan from warping.
Unless your recipe call for greasing the pan, we recommend using parchment paper or nothing if your pan has a nonstick coating. Additional butter or oil can cause your cookies to spread and the bottoms to burn, leaving you with thin, unevenly cooked results. For an eco-friendly alternative to parchment paper, consider this reusable silicone baking mat. Another plus of parchment paper and silicone mats is that cleanup is much easier.
GreenPan Craft Sheet Pan (Sur La Table) GreenPan makes some of our favorite nontoxic cookware, and this baking sheet has the same nonstick coating as its pots and pans. It baked crispy cookies with gooey centers, though some crumbs and grease residue remained. A few potatoes also stuck to the pan.
Vollrath Wear-Ever Cookie Sheet Pan (Amazon) This cookie sheet feels sturdy but a bit heavy. And with just two short rims, it's not as easy to grip and carry as others we tested. We needed a spatula to release cookies from the pan, but cleaning it with just soap and water was easy.
King Arthur Cookie Sheet (King Arthur Baking Company) This pan releases food very easily, with no crumbs left behind, thanks to a nontoxic, nonstick coating called Americoat. Its ridged surface helps with air flow and, therefore, even baking. It has just three rims, however, and we have mixed feelings about this. It's easy to hold, and the rimless side lets the cookies slide off the pan. But we had to be extra cautious to keep the hot oil from spilling over when we baked potato wedges.
Williams Sonoma Goldtouch Pro Nonstick Half Sheet (Williams Sonoma) This is a beautiful pan that baked cookies and potato wedges to a nice, even color. It was easy to clean after baking cookies, but the oil left on after we baked potatoes took more work to scrub off. It's a heavier pan, but one real con is that it warped and never returned to its original state. At the least, warping didn't affect its performance.
OXO Good Grips Non-Stick Pro Half Sheet (Amazon) In keeping with OXO's reputation for ergonomic designs, this pan was easy to move to and from the oven with its taller walls and rolled edges, despite feeling a bit heavy. Small ridges on its surface should improve the airflow, but we found the cookies a little too browned on the bottom. The pan's nonstick ceramic coating allowed food to release easily, and we barely had to scrub it to clean it.
Testing 19 baking sheets, some inevitably couldn't compete with others. The Wilton Perfect Results Mega Cookie Sheet (Target) seems like a good value for the size, but we found it too large to handle comfortably. It cooked food evenly and cleaned up easily, but it barely fit in the sink. It also warped in the oven. At a glance, the Goodcook Baking Sheet (Amazon) looks like a good value, but we recommend investing in a better, perhaps larger pan. It too warped in the oven, and grease stuck on it after we baked cookies. We didn't like the shallow rims, as it led to one of our oven mitts grazing the pan's hot, oily surface. Finally, Fat Daddio's Natural Aluminum Half Sheet Pan (Amazon) gave us so much trouble with oil sticking and staining that we had to knock it off our list, despite an otherwise good performance. Even scrubbing didn't help.
Cindy Brzostowski is a freelance writer and avid home cook with previous experience in cookbook publishing. Her writing has been featured in Allrecipes, Blue Apron, The Kitchn, and EatingWell among other publications. To determine the best baking sheets, she used data and insights from Food & Wine editors who tested 19 of the most popular models on the market.
Roof Stainless Steel Expert food product reviewer Laura Denby also contributed to this article. Laura is a food writer and former professional chef with a degree in Culinary Arts from the Institute of Culinary Education. Her work can be found in Real Simple, FoodNetwork.com, Taste of Home, and more.