Choosing Bakeware: Choosing the Proper Dish For Your Recipes

When it comes to baking, there are many things that can make or break the outcome of your recipes. People tend to emphasize the importance of mixing the right ingredients and preparing them correctly. However, the bakeware that is used tends to be forgotten about.

Believe it or not, the bakeware you choose does play a huge role in how your dish comes out and should therefore be paid attention to before the baking process begins.

Read on to learn about choosing the proper dish for your recipes.

Things To Consider

No one vessel or recipe is made the same, which is why it’s vital to select the right one to fit each recipe.

Bakeware differs in terms of shapes, sizes, structures, materials, and more. One might be better suited for a recipe than another due to the food's ingredients, shape, and quantity.

So before diving into anything else, you need to consider the bakeware’s qualities and see if they align with what you would need for a particular dish.

Here, we highlight a few of the things you should consider:

Material

The material of the bakeware plays a huge role in how well the dish is cooked and how much of a hassle the clean-up process is at the end.

Bakeware can be made of several types of materials, each of which has its own sets of advantages and disadvantages. Typically, you’ll find bakeware made up of cast iron, stainless steel, copper, aluminum, glass, and silicone, among a few others.

Here at Caraway, we are a huge advocate for the use of ceramic bakeware.

All of our products are made with a ceramic coating, which has a lot of advantages when baking. For one thing, it has great heat induction qualities, which guarantees a golden finish to whatever you’re making. Our products are oven safe up to 550℉. They also happen to be free of toxic chemicals such as PFOA, PTFE, other PFAs, lead, and cadmium.

Additionally, our bakeware provides a slick, non-stick surface for baking. This quality is extremely beneficial when dealing with stickier ingredients, such as cookie dough, or ingredients that harden and stick when dried, such as caramel.

The great thing about the products in both our Complete Bakeware Set and our Half Bakeware Set is that the ceramic materials allow easy clean-up. The slick surface that it creates ensures that excess food and ingredients fall right off with just a bit of water and dish soap.

You don’t even need to put much elbow grease into cleaning up the grease. Just a gentle scrub with a non-abrasive cloth can do the trick.

Size

As you look through your recipe, one of the first things you probably look at alongside the ingredients is the number of servings that it produces and how much you want to produce.

Along those lines, it’s also essential to consider the size of your bakeware: you need a piece of bakeware that can fit everything inside.

For example, if you have a small baking sheet but are making cookies for a large party, that might not be the best combination unless you're alright with reusing the same sheet for multiple batches and spending more time with the baking process.

In such an instance, our 18x13” Baking Sheet would be the best bet so you can bake more cookies in less time. Recipes can vary, and the time we may spend on baking can change day-to-day.

So, it’s usually good to have a few different sizes and a variety of bakeware in your kitchen. This way, you are prepared for such situations and have spare vessels if necessary.

Choosing the Proper Dish for Your Recipes

Now that you’ve taken everything into consideration, it’s time to determine the right dish for your recipe. Believe it or not, there is such a thing as using the wrong dish while baking.

Read on as we highlight some of the aspects and qualities of dishes that may work better for some forms of baking than others.

With Or Without Sides

Much of the time, choosing the proper dish for your recipe comes down to the texture and body of the batter or mixture that you’re going to bake.

For instance, the texture of cookie dough batter is very different from muffin batter, and therefore you wouldn’t use the same bakeware for them. With muffin batter, having bakeware that has sides can help it form in the baking process.

In these situations, our Muffin Pan would work perfectly, as the sides would be able to hold and mold the batter to create beautiful little muffins.

On the flip side, if you’re making standard chocolate chip cookies from your cookie dough batter, you wouldn’t need bakeware that has aides as you would with muffin batter.

For cookies, you want to give the dough enough space to expand as they bake to give it that wonderful, round cookie appearance. We would recommend using a baking sheet, which is sometimes known as a cookie sheet. More specifically, it would be beneficial to opt for the 18x13” Baking Sheet or the 10x15” Baking Sheet, depending on the amount that you are making.

Specific Shape

Building off the last point, the type of bakeware that you use plays a huge role in determining how the final product comes out. Without the proper shape, your recipe won’t take the right form and might not even cook properly either.

Let’s consider this example:

When you’re making a cake, you need it to be able to take on a specific shape. This is likely a round or rectangular shape that is a few inches tall. Because of that, bakeware such as a baking sheet wouldn’t be a good choice. The batter would just spread out over the surface and come out as a thin pancake.

Instead, something like our 9x13” Rectangular Pan or our 9” Circle Pan would do just the trick. These would both ensure that the cake comes out in the intended shape.

Style Is Key

Last but not least is style. If you're preparing your recipe for a party or gathering, it wouldn’t hurt to have it arrive in a nice-looking vessel.

Often when making recipes such as cakes, people flip the cake over to remove it from the pan it was baked in and to allow it to cool on a cooling rack. From there, it is often decorated and placed on a flat surface, such as a cake stand.

However, sometimes cakes don’t require decorating, and other times we just don’t have the time to wait for it to cool.

When that happens, it’s helpful to have bakeware that is so visually appealing that you can just pop the dish out of the oven and have it ready for display right away, especially since transporting a cake can be quite a hassle.

Look so further than our products for your recipe to make a grand entrance at a party. Our bakeware comes in a variety of different beautiful colors, including Navy, Cream, Perracotta, Grey, and Slate. With Caraway bakeware, you can color-coordinate your Cookware Set and Linens for the best kitchen style.

So more worrying about finding the perfect dish to place your masterpiece in after it bakes—we’ve got you covered.

Ready, Set, Bake

With just a few considerations, you’ll be fully prepared to take on any recipe. Baking can be complex and intimidating at times, but as long as you have the right ingredients, recipe, and bakeware in front of you, your dish is sure to turn out great.

Sources: The 7 Baking Pan Sizes Every Home Cook Needs | Kitchn How to Transport a Cake If You Don’t Have a Carrier | My Recipes Top Party Desserts Recipes | Southern Living