12 best baking trays to get your mitts on

Anodising is a fancy electrochemical process that makes baking trays more durable and eliminates the danger of corrosion. That’s part of the reason you can expect a lifetime guarantee with this British-made tray.

Although super thin, it’s solid and relatively weighty, and the thin lip on one of the long edges is just big enough to give you purchase when picking it up with gloved hands, while small enough that it won’t cause you issues when stacking.

You can use this one all the way up to 240C, as well as under a grill or over a hob (although it won’t work on induction). We tested it with a metal utensil and there were no scratches to be seen either – great if you have people at home who don’t abide by the law of non-stick trays.

Robust and hardy without being too heavy, this British-designed and made sheet has slightly tilted lips around the edges, with handy groves in the corners making it easy and comfortable for gripping with your thumb. It has a really decent surface area and heat seemed to spread really efficiently through it – the undersides of our cookies were more golden and crisp than with some other trays – so this might just be a real weapon against the dreaded soggy bottom.

That said, you might want to keep an eye on your bake, in case it’s cooked faster than the recipe suggests (Silverwood recommends considering reducing 10-15C and checking in on your bake at around two-thirds of the given cooking time). There’s a 25-year guarantee with this one, too.

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The silicone handles on this tray are heat resistant – although you (obviously) still need to protect those mitts with some mitts – and they give great grip when loading and unloading from the oven.

This is especially useful as the almost mirrored non-stick surface of the carbon steel is particularly smooth and silky to the touch – our cookie wasn’t even trying to stick, even after being left to cool on the tray. It heats up really evenly, too. It’s not recommended to use metal implements with this one – although the non-stick surface is durable, there’s a chance it could scratch.

The lips around the edges stop food from sliding off or spilling over the edges when it’s cooking but are shallow enough that you can still stack the tray in storage without any issue. The toughened carbon makes this tray safe to use up to a decent 240C.

This tray has a special patented non-stick surface which, along with the concentric circular grooves in the base, means we found our bake slid off nice and easily without even the need for a polite nudge – and that’s with no greasing or lining whatsoever. In fact, this was the best tray for non-stick that we tested. It makes sense, then, that Circulon is so certain of this bakeware’s non-stick abilities that it’s whacked a lifetime guarantee on it.

Easy to clean, it’s perfectly fine to fling in the dishwasher too, which makes it an ideal low-maintenance option for bakers who value all things fuss-free, while the wide ledges on the ends and relatively lightweight material make handling it nice and easy.

This hefty handmade baking sheet is forged in Shropshire from black iron, and seasoned with flax oil for a totally natural non-stick coating. Even without ridges around the edges, it’s super sturdy – no danger of this number warping in the oven – and because it’s made of iron it can be used at really high temperatures (up to 300C) including over direct heat from a hob or open fire.

The natural ingredients also make it handily recyclable – not that you’ll be getting rid of it any time soon – this tray will stand the test of time. It’s a doddle to wash – don’t use soap as it’ll wash off the flax oil seasoning – and just needs a coating of cooking oil to re-season and maintain the non-stick surface. This is a great choice if you want responsibly made kitchenware that’ll last

For just under a tenner, we were impressed at how hardy this tray is, with no sign of buckling or warping. It also has a decent weight to it and it seems strong enough to last. Happy in the freezer as well as the oven, the Prestige tray is handy for cooking homemade balls of cookie dough straight from frozen. Our chocolate chip numbers didn’t stick and had a nice firm, evenly cooked underside.

Although technically dishwasher safe, it’s recommended to handwash the tray to keep it in tip-top condition. And while it’s great value for baking things like pastries and biscuits, it’s probably not ideal for some bread or homemade pizzas, as it’s only oven safe up to 220C.

Oven safe up to a decent 250C, this tray is a good size and made the most of the space on our oven shelf – great for the sourdough baking we’re all partaking in of late. It comes with a 25-year guarantee and feels like it’ll easily last that long.

It’s clearly tough – twice as strong as aluminium, in fact – but doesn’t carry the extra weight that usually comes with such robustness, making it easy to handle. In fact, it was one of the lightest trays we tested.

The oxidised aluminium gets hot quickly and helps give an even heat throughout the tray – which can be used with direct heat, including with an induction hob – while the non-stick coating (triple layered Teflon) worked well, and is scratch resistant and dishwasher safe. Solid value for little more than £30.

Impressively sturdy and with a really efficient double-layered non-stick coating (gooey cookies were no match for this tray), ProCook’s offering feels weighty and robust. Oven safe to 260C and with a 10-year guarantee, it’s hard to argue with such great value.

The lip around the edges is quite substantial, making it good for gripping (maybe not so great for stacking), and reinforces its rigidity, while its relatively small size is handy if you’re only baking a couple of things at a time – a couple of frozen pastries for breakfast, maybe.

That said, this tray isn’t freezable or suitable for use over a hob, so might be less versatile than some others.

Super lightweight, this budget baking sheet is one of the thinnest – and cheapest – we tested. Although the base has some movement if you tilt the edges in your hands, it did a perfectly good bake job, with its non-stick coating allowing for a pretty easy release of our cookies, without greasing. The shallow lips mean it won’t take up too much room in your cupboard either, making it easy to store.

At just under 35cm long, it’s a decent size – although would probably only fit four of our super-spreading choc-chip numbers without danger of them merging into one (yes, our cookies are always healthily portioned). For just over a fiver, it’s a really decent choice for bakers on a budget, or those who won’t be making regular extravagant creations on it.

The tiny holes in this baking tray allow food to bake slightly quicker, as the heat reaches it more easily. Although super thin – which helps even more with that heat transfer and distribution – this sheet feels reassuringly sturdy and a good weight.

The flat edges give the tray the largest possible baking area and mean that it takes up little to no storage space – perfect for kitchens where cupboard room is at a premium. The trade-off is that the sheet is a little more difficult to pick up from the oven shelf if you have chunky oven mitts on (we’ve all been burnt by the teatowel technique – quite literally).

The perforations mean that you’ll need baking parchment or a silicone mat – the usual prerequisites, regardless – if you’re making cookies or anything from a similarly wet dough or batter. That’s not necessary for dryer doughs though, like pizza, which will benefit from the moisture evaporation to achieve a nice crisp result on the crust.

The double layer of non-stick makes this tray super silky and slippery to the touch – ideal for making sure food doesn’t cling on (ours certainly didn’t attempt to). Giving a really even bake, it produced maybe our most handsome cookie of the whole batch.

With a really sound and solid feel, it seems like a tray that will go the distance, although modest effort will need to be made to keep those non-stick powers intact long-term (plastic implements, careful storage – the usual). So long as you follow those rules, the non-stick is guaranteed for five years, and the tray itself for life.

This one’s perhaps not best suited to bread bakers or pizza makers though, as it’s only recommended for oven temperatures up to 210C.

Having one of the biggest surface areas of all the trays we tested, along with a thin base that heats up easily, the Judge sheet is great for cookies. The double-layered non-stick (which is guaranteed for five years) worked a treat, and the lips on either end meant that it was easy to load and unload from the oven.

It’s perhaps a little on the flimsy side, but showed no signs of buckling under the 160C heat we were baking at (it’s guaranteed up to a modest but still practical 210C).

Although it doesn’t have quite the same level of sturdiness as some of the other trays we tested, it’s certainly more hardy than many we’ve seen in the low-to-mid-budget range, and gave us a nicely even bake.