The most effective rolling pin, primarily based on what you prefer to bake

Rolling pins are important baking instruments, however their varied kinds could cause some confusion. Why are some tapered and others cylindrical? What supplies are finest? Do you want a couple of?

In the end, the perfect rolling pin for you is the one you’re probably the most snug utilizing. Some bakers swear by their grandmother’s picket pin with handles, whereas others favor the consistency of a straight pin. If you happen to can roll out neat shapes of dough with an excellent thickness, that’s all that issues. With an understanding of fine rolling approach, a baker can use virtually any pin to attain their purpose.

Nonetheless, totally different kinds of rolling pins do have benefits for sure duties, so I examined them to seek out the place every shines. With every rolling pin, I rolled out batches of All-Butter Pie Crust to evaluate the pin’s capacity to form a tidy, even circle, Roll-Out Sugar Cookies to see how evenly it might roll dough to a selected thickness, and Blitz Puff Pastry to guage how the pin fared with a big quantity of sticky dough rolled to particular dimensions. 

Forward of vacation pie and cookie baking season, here’s a information to our varied rolling pins and the way to decide on the perfect one to your expertise stage and the challenge at hand.

Jenn Bakos

Essentially the most versatile rolling pin: Straight Rolling Pin

Store: Straight Rolling Pin

For recipes that require flat, even dough in any thickness, and significantly for large-scale initiatives, attain for this straight rolling pin. This 19″ lengthy dowel-style pin carried out properly in every job in my testing, significantly excelling when rolling out a big batch of puff pastry to an 8″ x 20″ rectangle. Its calmly textured picket floor held simply sufficient flour to maintain the dough from sticking, and its easy form and even thickness of two” made it simple to maintain even stress throughout any form of dough. Bonus: Its heft and blunt ends are additionally good for crushing pretzels or candies to incorporate in your recipes.

This pin is a bit on the heavier and bulkier facet, however in the event you solely have room for one rolling pin in your baker’s toolkit, this one is probably the most versatile.

Testing outcomes:

• Pie dough: Superb
• Cookie dough: Glorious
• Puff pastry: Glorious

Images by Kristin Teig; meals styling by Liz Neily

The most effective rolling pin for pie dough: French Rolling Pin

Store: French Rolling Pin

This French-style rolling pin is barely tapered at every finish, permitting you to place kind of stress on both sides as you roll your dough, and it’s kind of narrower than the straight pin, beginning at 1″ on the ends and 1 3/4″ on the heart. This makes it extremely maneuverable and straightforward to swivel as you roll, permitting you to push the dough the place you need it to go. In my testing, this pin yielded the best circle of pie dough, permitting me to simply keep a spherical form.

I used to be additionally capable of get very even outcomes through the cookie dough and puff pastry exams with this pin, however the doughs did stick a bit extra throughout the board, and it might take some observe for much less skilled bakers to get the grasp of its design to attain even thicknesses.

Testing outcomes:

• Pie dough: Glorious
• Cookie dough: Superb
• Puff pastry: Superb

Images by Kristin Teig; meals styling by Liz Neily

The most effective specialised rolling pin for cookie dough: Uniform Pastry Pin 1/4 Inch

Store: Uniform Pastry Pin 1/4 Inch

Whenever you’re making roll-and-cut cookies, conserving the dough flat and even throughout its total floor is a should. If the dough is thick within the heart and skinny on the edges, your stamped cookies might be of various thickness; in consequence, they’ll bake at totally different charges. To take the entire guesswork out of the equation, use this intelligent uniform pastry pin. The cylinders at every finish maintain the dowel precisely 1/4″ above the work floor, which suggests your dough might be precisely 1/4″ thick all the best way round. The cookie dough I rolled with this pin was completely even and created very uniform cookies with none skinny spots. It’s additionally a protracted pin — 18″ in workable size! — so you’ll be able to roll out a whole lot of dough directly.

After all, this explicit pin is barely suited to recipes that decision for dough that requires a precise 1/4″ thickness (although we do additionally provide the identical model of pin in an 1/8″ depth). As a result of the dough will solely get 1/4″ thick, you are certain by the thickness, not the size, of the dough. When rolling pie dough with this pin, I couldn’t get the spherical to roll out to a 12″ diameter — it stopped quick at 9″ when it reached its 1/4″ thickness and would go no additional. What’s extra, its ends obtained in the best way when rolling puff pastry to dimensions bigger than 18″. It’s a specialised device, however in the event you bake cookies typically, it’s a useful one to have in your arsenal.

Testing outcomes:

• Pie dough: Truthful
• Cookie dough: Glorious
• Puff pastry: Truthful

Images by Danielle Sykes; meals styling by Liz Neily

Use the rolling pin that’s best for you

Whereas the choices above are wonderful for many duties, the perfect rolling pin is the one you’re most snug utilizing. Many American bakers grew up studying to cook dinner with a handle-style rolling pin like our Maple Rolling Pin and in the event you’re a fan of that model, it’s one other nice selection! The handles are snug to carry, and it carried out properly throughout all three exams, with slightly further effort required when rolling forwards and backwards.

You could find all of those pins and different useful baking instruments within the King Arthur Store.

Cowl photograph by Rick Holbrook; meals styling by Kaitlin Wayne.