The Best Baking Sheet

Too many home kitchens are cluttered with a mismatched assortment of subpar baking sheets. You know the type: Bent. Unstable. Scratched. So flimsy they scorch the bottoms of cookies before the tops even start to brown.

If you cook or bake even occasionally, you need a dependable baking sheet. In fact, you should have a few. A high-quality rimmed Best baking sheet is affordable and highly versatile. Beyond cookies, it’s perfect for roasting veggies, baking pizzas, toasting seeds, catching pie drips as they bake, or whipping up a quick one-pan meal.

After hours of baking and sampling cookies—someone had to do it—along with other tests, we’ve found that the Nordic Ware Naturals Baker’s Half Sheet is the top choice for an all-around baking sheet.

Everything We Recommend

Since this guide debuted in 2013, we’ve dedicated over 45 hours to testing 15 different sheet pans. After baking 24 batches of cookies, six pizzas, and several pounds of oven fries, we discovered that the Nordic Ware pan cooks as uniformly as sheets costing twice as much and doesn’t warp under high temperatures like more affordable options.

Nordic Ware Naturals Baker’s Half Sheet

The Nordic Ware Naturals Baker’s Half Sheet has remained our favorite since 2013, and after years of frequent use, it still stays perfectly flat and produces cookies with an evenly golden finish. While other aluminum pans might offer comparable performance, the Nordic Ware Best baking sheet consistently stands out as the most affordable option for its quality. It’s a reliable, sturdy tool capable of tackling everything from roasting perfectly crisp oven fries to preparing a quick one-pan meal.

Artisan Professional Classic Aluminum Half Sheet

If the Nordic Ware pan isn’t available or if you find cleaning its stamped logo troublesome, the Artisan Professional Classic Aluminum Half Sheet is a good alternative. Similar to the Nordic Ware sheet, it’s constructed from sturdy, uncoated 18-gauge aluminum that can endure high temperatures. However, it browned oven fries a bit faster than the Nordic Ware pan, and its higher cost doesn’t translate to improved performance.

While we favor rimmed baking sheets for their versatility, if you prefer a rimless cookie sheet, we suggest the Vollrath Wear-Ever Aluminum Cookie Sheet With Natural Finish. This two-handled pan was easy to maneuver in the oven, baked cookies evenly, and cleaned up effortlessly. Crafted from 10-gauge aluminum, it’s thicker than our top pick—a necessary feature to resist warping without the added support of rims. However, it’s less versatile than our other picks since it can’t hold roasted vegetables or capture the juices from a sheet-pan meal.

Why You Should Trust Us?

Marguerite Preston is a former professional baker and serves as the senior editor of Wirecutter’s kitchen team.

In addition to editing both sweet and savory cookbooks, Wirecutter editorial director Christine Cyr Clisset has reviewed a broad range of kitchen tools and equipment for Wirecutter.

For this guide:

We consulted cookbooks like The Gourmet Cookie Book and reviewed equipment write-ups from various other publications.
We interviewed Alice Medrich, author of Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-in-Your-Mouth Cookies, and Jennifer Aaronson, formerly head food editor at Martha Stewart Living and lead food editor for Martha Stewart’s Cookies.
Since its debut in 2013, we’ve invested over 45 hours testing 15 sheet pans.
In our latest round of testing, we baked 24 batches of cookies, six pizzas, and several pounds of oven fries.
As with all Wirecutter reviews, I evaluate products with complete editorial independence. I am never informed of any business implications tied to my recommendations. You can read more about our editorial standards.

How We Picked And Tested?

A reliable Best baking sheet should cook evenly and endure years of regular use. After consulting experts, testing 15 pans, and researching many others, we established the following criteria for an excellent pan, ranked by importance:

A Rim for Versatility: While rimless sheets make it easier to slide cookies onto a rack, and America’s Test Kitchen (subscription required) found they bake cookies faster due to better air circulation, we prioritized rimmed sheets. Rimmed sheets are far more versatile, capable of holding whatever you want to roast.

Aluminum for Even Baking: Baking sheets made of bare aluminum are ideal as they conduct heat efficiently, distribute it evenly, and cool quickly. Alternatives like aluminized steel or tri-ply (aluminum sandwiched by stainless steel) don’t perform as well—steel heats unevenly, and tri-ply is expensive and retains heat longer, increasing the risk of burning.

Heavy Gauge and Warp Resistance: Thicker pans are generally more durable and bake more evenly than thinner ones. However, overly thick pans can be heavy and slow down browning. Both of our favorite rimmed baking sheets are 18 gauge, which strikes a great balance. Our rimless pick is a thicker 10 gauge, offering stability without rim support.

No Nonstick Coatings: We avoid nonstick best baking sheets because their coatings degrade at high temperatures and scratch easily. Instead, lining pans with parchment paper creates a nonstick surface, simplifies cleanup, and insulates against burnt bottoms. Additionally, nonstick pans, often dark in color, absorb more heat and can burn cookies on the bottom before the tops are done.

Usability: Rimmed jelly-roll pans are often thin, flimsy, and smaller than half-sheet pans, which measure approximately 18 by 13 inches. Half sheets are the largest standard size that fits in most ovens (except very small apartment models). As a bonus, rectangular cooling racks typically fit inside half-sheet pans, a convenient setup for roasting meat or glazing cakes.

Simple Is Better: Baking sheets with extra features tend to cost more without improving performance. Insulated baking pans, which have an air pocket between thin metal layers, bake cookies more slowly—useful for delicate cookies prone to burning but unnecessary for most other tasks. Experts agree that parchment paper on a regular sheet pan works just as well for delicate baking.

Avoid Perforations or Ridges: Perforated or ridged pans are designed for air circulation, even browning, and minimal sticking. However, without a nonstick coating, food often sticks to these pans, and the ridges are difficult to clean. While we appreciate ridges in cake pans, they aren’t practical for baking sheets.

How We Tested?

We designed our tests to evaluate the pans’ durability and ability to bake evenly. To test this, we baked honey florentines (fragile cookies prone to burning) and thicker sugar cookies to check for consistent browning from top to bottom.

For uniformity, we baked one parchment-lined pan at a time on the middle rack, rotating it 180 degrees halfway through the baking process.

To assess sturdiness, we tested how the pans held up to high heat by baking at 450 °F to 500 °F for at least 25 minutes. After roasting, we evaluated the pans’ flatness and ease of cleaning.

Although most manufacturers recommend against using the dishwasher for sheet pans, we’ve cleaned ours both by hand and in the dishwasher dozens of times in the Wirecutter test kitchen. While the pans have become slightly discolored, this hasn’t impacted their performance.

Our pick: Nordic Ware Naturals Baker’s Half Sheet

The Nordic Ware Naturals Baker’s Half Sheet outperformed or matched every other best baking sheet we tested. It baked cookies more evenly than sheets costing twice as much and remained flat under high heat.

While you may find a similar pan at a kitchen-supply store, the Nordic Ware sheet is easily available online. It’s also one of the most consistently affordable, high-quality aluminum pans we’ve encountered.

Its performance is consistently reliable. In every test, the Nordic Ware pan baked evenly, with no noticeable hot or cold spots. Slice-and-bake cookies came out perfectly golden on both the tops and bottoms, delicate honey florentines caramelized without burning too quickly, and the bottom crust of a pissaladière baked uniformly.

By contrast, several other pans we tested resulted in cookies with slightly uneven browning on the bottoms.

It withstands high temperatures. During our high-heat tests—roasting at 425 °F, 450 °F, and 500 °F—the pan remained flat, showing no signs of warping, bending, or buckling. All the Nordic Ware pans in our test kitchen are still perfectly flat even after years of use. In contrast, other pans, including the thick, pricey 13-gauge Vollrath 5314 half-sheet pan, warped slightly after just one round of roasting at 450 °F.

It offers multiple sizes. The Nordic Ware pan is also available in quarter- and eighth-sheet sizes, which are useful additions to the half-sheet size. These smaller sizes are perfect for tasks like toasting nuts or baking a few pieces of fish and are easier to store in your fridge.

They’re also great for toaster ovens and outperform the pans typically included with these appliances. The eighth-sheet fits in all of our favorite toaster ovens, and the quarter-sheet also fits in our larger picks.

It comes with a lifetime limited warranty. However, the warranty “does not cover damage caused by accidents, misuse, [or] overheating,” and Nordic Ware doesn’t specify what it considers “overheating.”

Runner-up: Artisan Professional Classic Aluminum Half Sheet

If our top pick is unavailable, the Artisan Professional Classic Aluminum Half Sheet is an excellent alternative. It features a completely smooth surface, making it ideal if the stamped logo on the Nordic Ware pan bothers you (as it can be tricky to clean and prone to staining).

The Artisan baking sheet performed similarly to the Nordic Ware pan and is typically the closest in price. It baked cookies evenly to a perfect golden brown and didn’t warp during our high-heat tests.

However, we did notice some crackling when the pan was hot and placed on the counter, indicating it may shift slightly as it adjusts to temperature changes. Additionally, it’s less widely available in smaller quarter- and eighth-sheet sizes compared to the Nordic Ware pan.

The Vollrath Wear-Ever Aluminum Cookie Sheet with Natural Finish may not be as versatile as a rimmed baking sheet, but it excels at baking cookies. This heavy-gauge sheet bakes gently and evenly, with two open sides that make it easy to slide cookies directly onto a cooling rack.

Raised handles on the short ends make it simple to rotate the pan in the oven and offer a secure grip when removing it. It also features a small hole on one end for hanging.

Rimless cookie sheets can be trickier to handle than rimmed pans, and parchment paper is more likely to slip off when pulling sheets like this one from the oven. However, of the three rimless sheets we tested, the Vollrath was the easiest to use, thanks to its two handled ends that kept the parchment in place.

Unfortunately, the warranty for Vollrath Wear-Ever bakeware only covers use in “commercial foodservice,” so this pan isn’t covered for home use. Nonetheless, it should remain durable for many years of regular use.

The Competition

We tested the Nordic Ware Prism Half Sheet to evaluate how its ridged surface compared with the smooth aluminum of our top pick. While it browned cookies slightly less (which is ideal for baking delicate cookies), cleaning off stuck-on food proved to be more difficult.

The USA Pan Large Cookie Sheet and USA Pan Jelly Roll Pan feature corrugated bottoms to promote even browning. However, the nonstick coating doesn’t hold up well under higher temperatures or frequent use of spatulas. The cookie sheet also only has one handle, making it cumbersome to rotate in the oven.

The Member’s Mark Half-Size Aluminum Sheet Pan from Sam’s Club was the runner-up in our 2013 guide. It bakes as evenly as the Nordic Ware pan, and you get a two-pack for the price of one of our top picks. However, the pan did warp under high heat and is available only at Sam’s Club.

The Vollrath 5314 Half-Size Wear-Ever Heavy-Duty Aluminum Sheet Pan With Natural Finish is a thick, 13-gauge pan. Surprisingly, it warped slightly while baking honey florentines at just 375 °F and warped even further when roasting sweet potatoes at 425 °F.

The 18-gauge Vollrath 5303 Half-Size Wear-Ever Heavy-Duty Aluminum Sheet Pan With Natural Finish is well-reviewed on Amazon. It performs similarly to other 18-gauge pans, but it browned cookie bottoms unevenly.

The Chicago Metallic Commercial II Traditional Uncoated Large Jelly Roll Pan caused honey florentines to brown too much during our tests.

Circulon’s carbon steel 11-Inch x 17-Inch Nonstick Cookie Pan baked cookies evenly, but our potato chips ended up burned in spots. It feels sturdy, but the nonstick surface deteriorates over time.

At around $100, the All-Clad D3 Stainless 3-ply Bonded Roasting Sheet (10 x 14 inches) is too expensive for its performance. It also has a rim on one side, which makes it harder to maneuver and less versatile than a fully rimmed sheet.

The Kitchen Tools We Use Daily: Rimmed Baking Sheets

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