Best Baking Trays for Cookies That Release Without a Liner

How the Five Compare on the Numbers

A cookie tray is decided by two things the listings mostly do not publish: how tall the sides are and whether the surface releases on its own. GoodCook gives both, a 1 inch side set at a 4 to 5 degree angle and a textured nonstick coating. NutriChef is coated too but publishes no side height, because its only figures describe the carton. The other three publish a 1 inch rim and bare metal.

Only NutriChef states an oven temperature limit, 446 degrees Fahrenheit, and it is the one pick whose coating could be damaged by exceeding it. M MCIRCO publishes a range of minus 40 to 500 degrees Fahrenheit for its silicone mats, which is the mats rather than the stainless pans under them. Nobody else gives an oven figure of any kind, coated or bare.

The weight row is the one that looks comparable and is not. Each figure covers a different number of objects, so none of them is the weight of a pan, and no listing gives a per pan figure to divide out. The same trap sits in the size row: three of the five sell more than one size, and only the largest pan in each set can be lined up against a single pan sold on its own.

Surface and Sides, Which Is What Cookies Care About

The Two Coated Pans, and the Only Published Wall Angle

GoodCook is the only listing in this pool to publish an angle for its side walls, 4 to 5 degrees, and it says why: straighter edges on the finished bake and less frosting needed to decorate a layer. That is a specific claim about the shape of what comes out of the oven, not about the pan, and no other listing here makes one.

Its surface is the other difference. GoodCook describes a textured diamond pattern intended to move air under the dough and to stiffen the sheet, over a scratch resistant nonstick coating on carbon steel. NutriChef is also coated carbon steel, states that the coating is free of PTFE, PFOA and PFOS, and adds red silicone handles and an exterior lacquer rated for high heat.

Bare Steel, and What You Have to Put On It

Wildone, M MCIRCO and Stock Your Home publish no coating at all. Wildone and M MCIRCO are both bare stainless with a mirror polish, and both argue that polish plus rolled rims is enough for release. For cookies that usually means parchment or a mat, which is a running supply on two of these three and is not mentioned in either listing.

M MCIRCO is the one that solves it in the box, with three silicone and fiberglass mats sized to its three pans. That makes a bare steel pan behave like a lined one without the coating that wears. Stock Your Home sidesteps the question entirely: the foil tray is disposable, so release is the last thing it has to survive.

How Many Pans You Actually Get

One Pan, Three Pans, Nine Pieces, Fifteen Trays

These five are not the same purchase. GoodCook is a single pan at 11 by 17 inches in its own words. NutriChef is three pans it calls small, medium and large without publishing any of the three sizes. Wildone is two pans at 16 by 12 by 1 inch plus two racks at 15.35 by 11 by 0.67 inch, which is the only rack size published anywhere here.

M MCIRCO is nine pieces, three rimmed pans at 15.9 by 12 by 1, 12.4 by 9.6 by 1 and 10.4 by 8.1 by 1 inch, with a rack and a mat for each. Stock Your Home is fifteen foil trays at 16 by 11.25 by 0.75 inches, aimed at a bake sale or a catering run where the tray leaves with the cookies.

Why the Published Weights Cannot Be Compared

Every listing here publishes a weight and none of them publishes the weight of one pan. GoodCook’s 1.77 pounds is a single pan, so it is the only figure that means what it appears to mean. NutriChef’s 3.05 pounds covers three pans, Wildone’s 4.39 pounds covers four objects, and M MCIRCO’s 5.4 pounds covers nine.

Stock Your Home’s 1 pound is the strangest of the set and probably the most honest. Fifteen foil trays weighing a pound between them is the entire point of a disposable tray, and it also explains the warning the listing feels it has to make, that the high gauge and full curl rim will hold heavy cookies without ripping.

Where These Listings Contradict Themselves

Two Names for the Same Pan Size

GoodCook sells this pan as 11 by 17 inches in its title and its size field, while the published dimension fields on the same listing read 12 by 17.75 by 1 inch. Those are not roundings of each other. The maker’s own words are the ones used on this page, so treat it as an 11 by 17 inch pan and allow for a rim that pushes its outside measurement wider.

NutriChef has the opposite gap. Its title and size field say three piece and small, medium and large, and never give a figure for any of the three. The only numbers on the listing are 17.1 by 11.8 by 0.67 inches in its dimension fields, and 0.67 inches of height cannot be three stacked pans, so that is a package figure and all three pan sizes are unpublished.

Which Published Figures Describe a Pan

Three of these five have no unit dimensions in their fields, and the three cases are not the same. On NutriChef and M MCIRCO the figures describe the shipping box and were discarded: NutriChef’s read 17.1 by 11.8 by 0.67 inches for three stacked pans and M MCIRCO’s 16.3 by 12.3 by 1.6 inches for nine pieces. Neither can be read as a pan.

Stock Your Home is the opposite case. Its figures were set aside as a package size too, but its own last bullet states that each baking sheet is 16 inches long, 11.25 inches wide and 0.75 inches high, which is the same set of numbers. So those describe the tray, and this page uses them. NutriChef is left as the one pick with no published pan size at all.

Which One Fits Your Kitchen

Drop cookies you want off the pan cleanly. GoodCook is the coated single pan with the textured surface and the only published wall angle, 4 to 5 degrees, at 11 by 17 inches in the maker’s own words. One pan, 1.77 pounds, nothing else in the box.

Baking in batches on three racks at once. NutriChef gives three coated pans in small, medium and large and is the only pick to publish an oven limit, 446 degrees Fahrenheit. The coating is stated free of PTFE, PFOA and PFOS, and the silicone handles are there for a loaded pan.

Cookies that have to cool before they are stacked. Wildone is two bare 18/0 stainless pans at 16 by 12 by 1 inch with two welded racks at 15.35 by 11 by 0.67 inch, the only rack measurement published here. No coating, so plan on parchment.

A kit that covers a toaster oven and a full oven. M MCIRCO is nine pieces, three stainless pans down to 10.4 by 8.1 by 1 inch, three racks on raised feet and three silicone mats, so the bare steel arrives with its liner rather than needing one bought.

Bake sales, gifts and catering runs. Stock Your Home is fifteen disposable foil trays at 16 by 11.25 by 0.75 inches weighing 1 pound in total, recyclable, and designed so the tray goes out of the door with the cookies instead of coming back to your kitchen.

What We Could Not Verify

Six things a cookie baker would want from these listings and will not find in them.

• No listing states the gauge or thickness of its metal. Wildone says thick gauge, M MCIRCO says premium pure stainless and Stock Your Home says high gauge, with no figure behind any of those words.
• Three of the five publish a weight for a set rather than for a pan, and none gives a per pan figure, so pan weight cannot be compared at all.
• Only one of the five publishes an oven temperature limit. The two bare steel sets state nothing, and the coated GoodCook pan states nothing either, which matters more on a coating than on bare metal.
• NutriChef never publishes a size for any of the three pans in its set, so none of them can be matched to a recipe or an oven.
• GoodCook’s own listing gives two different sizes for one pan, 11 by 17 inches in words and 12 by 17.75 by 1 inch in the dimension fields, and nothing on the listing reconciles them.
• M MCIRCO states minus 40 to 500 degrees Fahrenheit for its silicone mats and nothing at all for the stainless pans those mats sit on.