12 Essential Baking Tools Every Home Baker Needs

In this baking tools guide, you will be armed with everything you need to know to build an arsenal of essential baking equipment to keep stocked for everyday baking. From bowls and mixers to pans and measuring cups, this is your one-stop shopping guide for beginning your baking journey!

A while back, we shared our list of essential baking ingredients for stocking a baking pantry for everyday baking. This companion list of essential baking tools will set you up nicely so that you’ll have everything you need if you want to whip up a batch of cookies, brownies, or even a chocolate layer cake.

While there are many, many, many more items in our kitchen, we feel like if you have the basics on this list, you can make close to anything!

#1: Oven Thermometer

What we use and recommend: CDN Oven Thermometer. One of the most critical pieces of baking equipment! We keep one in our oven at all times to ensure that the oven temperature is correct (spoiler alert: most times it’s not!).

We actually have to set our oven’s temperature 75 degrees cooler than we want it because it runs hot. We've only used one oven that was true to temperature since using oven thermometers religiously; we highly recommend one!

#2: Food Scale

What we use and recommend: OXO 22-pound capacity kitchen scale. We've used this scale for nearly a decade and love it so much. Straightforward to use and gives readouts in ounces, grams, cups, and milliliters, we use it for baking as well as other household tasks.

🌟 READ: The Importance of Weighing Ingredients When Baking

#3: Hand Mixer

What we use and recommend: Cuisinart 7-Speed Hand Mixer. We have owned this for over 15 years and it’s still going strong! We love that it has a count-up digital timer so you know exactly how long you’ve been mixing something. While stand mixers are pretty and useful, we use our hand mixer for 95% of our kitchen projects!

#4: Mixing Bowls

What we use and recommend: A set of nested glass mixing bowls and a set of nested stainless steel mixing bowls.

We like to keep both on hand in a variety of sizes; glass is great for microwaving, while stainless is heat safe and can be used as a double boiler on the stovetop.

#5: Baking Pans

We need something to bake all of those rich goodies in!

Must-Have Baking Pans

If you’re just building your supply, then these should be your go-to for straightforward recipes:

Rectangular Baking Pan – Glass is the most versatile, but a metal one with straight sides is great, too.
Square Baking Pan – Again, start with glass then add in a metal one if you’d like! We recommend one 8-inch pan and one 9-inch pan.
Round Cake Pans – 9-inch pans are standard for most layer cakes and we recommend buying three so you’re prepared for triple layer cakes!

Nice-to-Have Baking Pans

This is where it gets fun! Add to your collection when you can with these pans and you’ll be ready to make almost any recipe!

Bundt Pan
8-inch Round Cake Pans (again, we recommend three for triple layer cakes)
Cheesecake (Springform) Pan
Loaf Pans – 8½ x 4½-inch and 9×5-inch
Muffin Pans – Standard size, mini size, and jumbo size.
Tart Pan

#6: Pie Plates

What we use and recommend: 9-inch Pyrex glass pie plates. We own three of these, and we think keeping one ceramic deep-dish pie plate is a great “nice-to-have” option.

#7: Rimmed Baking Sheets

What we use and recommend: Vollrath Wear-Ever Half Sheet Pans. These are 13×18-inch and we use these all the time, from baking Ina’s outrageous brownies and countless batches of cookies to roasting vegetables and potatoes. We own four of these.

We also own two 10x-15-inch jellyroll pans (hello, Texas sheet cake!).

#8: Cooling Racks

What we use and recommend: CIA Masters Wire Cooling Rack. If you’re big into holiday baking, you can’t have too many! We own four of these.

#9: Measuring Cups & Spoons

Measuring cups fall into two categories: dry and liquid. The vessels measure capacities differently, so you’ll want to use dry measuring cups for all of your dry ingredients (flour, sugar, cocoa, etc.) and liquid measuring cups for any – you guessed it! – liquids.

Dry Measuring Cups and Spoons

What we use and recommend: OXO Stainless Steel Measuring Cups and Spoons. Can you ever have enough?! You’ll want at least one set of each (we keep three or four on hand) and we highly prefer stainless steel for both.

Liquid Measuring Cups

What we use and recommend: Pyrex 1-cup, 2-cup, and 4-cup set. You can certainly get by with a single 1-cup measuring cup, we actually use our 2-cup version much more frequently and would recommend that one first. The 4-cup one is great for melting chocolate or measuring large amounts of liquids.

#10: Whisks & Spatulas

What we use and recommend: DI ORO seamless silicone spatulas. We love that these are a single piece of silicone so the head doesn’t get loose or get dirty at the crease. Plus, they are heat resistant and incredibly straightforward to clean.

For whisks, we use OXO wire whisks. We keep two large balloon whisks, a small whisk, as well as a flat whisk that we use mostly for cooking-related tasks like making sauces and gravies.

#11: Fine-Mesh Sieve

What we use and recommend: Rosle Stainless Steel Fine-Mesh Sieve. This is a workhorse in our kitchen; we use it for sprinkling powdered sugar on waffles to making silky smooth pastry cream and everything in between.

#12: Rolling Pin

From pie crust to pizza dough and sugar cookies, every kitchen needs a rolling pin! The one we have our mom passed down to us, so we have no idea what brand it is; it has no handles (it’s similar to this one), which we actually love because it keeps you from being too heavy-handed with it.

If you make a lot of pies and pastries, you may want to invest in a marble rolling pin, as it stays cool and makes handling pastry dough easier.