Hey everyone! I’m trying something a bit different this week. Instead of a recipe, I thought I’d help out anyone who wants to get started with baking but doesn’t know what they need. Back to recipes next week!
Everyone has to start somewhere, and with baking, there’s a bit of a barrier to entry. Whether you’re looking to bake cakes, cupcakes, bread, or cookies, you need both tools and know-how.
Unfortunately, there are a million different products out there across every category, and it can be very hard to tell what’s good, what’s mediocre, and what might as well be a scam – ESPECIALLY if you’re new to baking.
That’s why I put this guide together. I’ve been baking for years now, and I’ve accumulated a lot of baking-related tools and supplies. I wanted to share what I’ve found indispensable, what’s useful but optional, and what you really don’t need.
My list will be different from a lot of other lists online, for a few reasons.
- It’s a home baker’s list. I don’t do this as a business, so I’m not going to be recommending equipment to bake a dozen loaves of bread at once or a hundred batches of cookies.
- It’s aimed squarely at people picking up baking for the first time. If it’s not essential and it doesn’t make your life a lot easier, I’m probably not going to recommend it.
- It’s based on real experience. Everything on this list is something I’ve bought and tried out, so I can vouch for quality and utility.
If you’re shopping for yourself, or if you’re looking to buy gifts for a friend who’s just starting to get into baking, this guide to baking equipment will get you started. You’ll want to make a few decisions, though, such as what kind of baking you or your friend want to be doing. While a lot of supplies are shared, you don’t need a loaf pan for cookies, you know?
I’ve broken this list down into three groups. First is baking essentials, the ten categories of baking tools and equipment I can’t live without. Second is the optional accessories, things that make life easier or work for specific tasks, but you don’t need to get started. Finally, I touch on some of the non-essentials, which are things you either really don’t need, or should only consider picking up if you’re serious about baking.
Finally, before we begin, a bit of disclosure: I link to a bunch of products in this post, and they’re going to be Amazon affiliate links. If you make a purchase through those links, I’ll earn a few cents (at no cost to you), which can help me keep this blog running without intrusive ads, sponsored content, or any of that other nonsense. It really does help, so consider it if you’re interested, please!
Ten Categories of Essential Baking Tools for Novice Bakers
Now let’s get right to it with the ten groups of essentials I think every novice baker should have. You might have some of these around already, and some are pretty obvious, so I’ll talk about why I’ve picked specific products in those cases.
1: Measuring Cups, Spoons, and Scales
There’s a common saying that cooking is an art, but baking is a science. That means you need accurate measurements to get everything right.
The truth is, there’s a bit of flexibility in baking recipes. Sometimes a chemical reaction needs exact proportions or measurements, but you don’t need THAT much precision. If you want that much precision, it’s a good idea to follow the European style and use weights; if you don’t mind a little flexibility, volume measures are fine.
The way I see it, there are four main types of measuring devices you’ll want in the kitchen as a novice baker. Chances are you already have some, but getting a nice set is both pretty cheap and feels nice.
First up is measuring spoons. There are a million styles and designs of measuring spoons, and a lot comes down to aesthetics. Want one of those fancy copper-coated sets? Go for it. The biggest considerations, to me, are ease cleaning, readability of the size (so you don’t have to guess), and shape. By the third time you try to get herbs out of a jar and find the measuring spoon is too big to fit in, you’ll want a narrower set.
I love this set of magnetic, double-sided measuring spoons. One side being narrow makes it easier to get into jars, the color-coded labels will help you remember which one is which, and they stick together in a compact stack so you don’t lose them in a drawer.
Part and parcel with measuring spoons is measuring cups, since you need those larger measurements too. Personally, I really don’t care for plastic measuring cups. I’ve broken more than a few scooping out heavy flour or tough brown sugar. I really like the Smithcraft stainless steel measuring cups especially because the engraved labels never fade like painted-on labels will.
You could also consider measuring cups like this set with engraved partial measures on the sides, in case you just want to use one larger measuring cup for several smaller ingredients. I haven’t found the need to, personally.
The third essential is larger glass liquid measuring cups, ranging from 1.5 to 4 cups. Pyrex makes a great set with 1, 2, and 4-cup measures. A friend of mine also recommends these beaker-shaped measuring cups, and I have to admit the ease of nesting seems very convenient, but in full disclosure, I don’t have a set myself to fully recommend them.
The final measuring tool is a good kitchen scale. If you want to bake by weight instead of volume, it’s essential to have one. Even if you don’t, there are a lot of good reasons to measure certain ingredients by weight, like if you want to divide dough into equal-sized rolls. Kitchenaid makes a nice dual-platform digital scale with one side for heavy items and one for lighter measures. Truthfully, though, just about any digital scale will be fine as long as it’s precise enough. I use a simple Etekcity food scale and it works for everything I need.
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2: Baking Utensils and Tools
My second category is all of the various utensils and hand tools you’ll use while baking. There are a ton of possible utensils for baking, but I’ve narrowed my list down to just the ones that are, in my view, truly essential. There are plenty of others that will fit in the optional section below, and I certainly don’t begrudge you buying some, but make sure they’re something you think you’ll actually use.
- Rubber Spatulas. These are your bread and butter of, well, making bread and butter. Get a few small ones and a couple of big ones to cover all the bases. I have one-piece and spatulas with removable heads, and I like the one-piece ones more, but it’s mostly personal preference. A set like this for larger spatulas and a set of smaller spatulas will do a ton of work in the kitchen for you.
- Whisks. There are a lot of styles of whisk, like dough whisks and egg whisks and flat whisks and… I’ve never needed anything other than basic balloon whisks. Get a nice big whisk with metal tines and a couple of smaller whisks with silicone-coated tines and you’ll be set.
- Bench Scraper. Also known as a pastry cutter or dough scraper, these are basically big flat blades useful for scraping dough off flat surfaces, cutting dough or pastry into smaller chunks, and similar tasks. I like a bench scraper with measurements engraved on it so you can use it to measure the width of dough as you roll it out. I bought this scraper nearly ten years ago and have zero complaints with it.
- Pastry Brushes. I was on the edge with including these, because in a lot of cases, you can drizzle with a spoon for a similar effect. But, they’re just too useful for egg washes and brushing butter on rolls to leave them out. I greatly prefer brushes with silicone bristles, instead of ones using things like boar bristles, which can occasionally fall out and end up cooked onto your food.
- Normal Spatulas. Chances are you have normal spatulas in your kitchen already, but if you want to get a new set, something like these silicone spatulas work fine. A metal spatula can also be nice, but can sometimes scrape up your cookie sheets, and that’s a shame. Silicone is quite handy for baking, as you’ll come to find out.
These aren’t all the exact items I own, but in a lot of cases mine are store-brand equivalents or have been replaced by newer versions. Either way, they’re the same things, more or less.
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3: Mixing and Prep Bowls
Category three is the mixing bowls, and you’ll want a good number of these. I have a set that includes one extra-large bowl, a couple of large bowls, and a handful of smaller bowls, all stainless steel. This set is pretty similar.
I greatly prefer light stainless steel bowls over heavier glass bowls, and I’ve pretty much never needed bowls with lids or any of those other accessories the pricier sets come with. Just a few nesting mixing bowls will be most of what you need.
You’ll see in my picture above that I have some vintage Pyrex mixing bowls too. They’re cute, but they don’t really have any advantages over the steel bowls except as display and serving bowls. Grab a set if you like them, but you might need to go antique shopping.
The other bowls you often see on my blog are food prep bowls, which are smaller and made of glass. I have a bunch of these. They’re handy for mixing up small amounts of dry ingredients, or an herb and spice mix, but I use them as much for display purposes for my recipe posts as for functional purposes. Grab them if you like to prep your ingredients ahead of time.
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4: Rolling Pins for Dough and Pastry
Not all baking requires a rolling pin, but if you’re going to be doing pastry work, bread dough, or anything of the sort, it’s essential to have at least one around.
There are actually a bunch of types of rolling pins.
- Traditional rolling pins have a rolling cylinder with handles on either side, and are the ones I use.
- Dowel pins are basically just wooden rods without handles, and are fine but less convenient to use than handled rolling pins. They can also be found in metal.
- Marble rolling pins are made of stone, and are very useful if you want to make pastry where butter needs to be kept cold. The thermal mass of the stone keeps the rolling pin itself colder while it works the dough.
- French tapered rolling pins are like dowels that get thinner at the ends, so you can adjust pressure as you roll dough around. I think these are firmly for advanced bakers who want fine control over their dough. I’ve never needed one.
- Gimmick rolling pins have textures to them, or are shaped like barbells to help roll dough to a fixed height. I don’t think they’re generally useful enough to own any.
I recommend getting one or two rolling pins. If you only get one, make it a marble rolling pin. If you want two, make the second a wooden rolling pin. Marble can be fatiguing to use all the time, and the wooden rolling pins are lighter. If you keep them in good condition these will last a lifetime, so don’t feel bad about paying for something a step up over the cheapest options.
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5: Zesters and Graters
I almost hesitated to put graters and zesters on this list. Not because you don’t use them for baking, since you do. There are two reasons I paused. The first is that you can buy most things you’d want to grate already pre-grated, though you’ll have worse results with things like dried citrus zest compared to fresh zest. The other is that a lot of people are just going to have them already for non-baking reasons. Still, I decided to include them just because I do enough grating cheese and zesting citrus to make it worthwhile.
I recommend three products: a zester, which has small blades suitable for shaving the very outside off of citrus; a grater, useful for smaller amounts of cheese and occasionally more exotic ingredients; and a box grater, for when you need to grate larger amounts of something.
- Zester: I’ve gone through a lot of zesters and they tend to either go dull over time or the plastic around them cracks. So far, I’ve been very happy with this metal-frame zester for durability and sharpness.
- Grater: Handheld graters don’t have the same problems I find zesters to have, and I’ve been very happy with one of these for years.
- Box Grater: Technically you don’t need a handheld if you have this, but sometimes you don’t want to pull out and then clean something this big for smaller batches of items. This Kitchenaid box grater even comes with a nested storage box to grate items directly into it, which his quite handy.
Generally speaking, more metal construction will make these last longer, but you may have to replace them when they get dull just so you don’t accidentally grate a layer off your knuckles.
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6: Strainers, Sifters, and Sieves
Strainers and sieves are very handy for a bunch of different reasons. You can sift lumps out of flour. You can tap an even dusting of powdered sugar over cookies. You can strain seeds out of berries when you make compote or syrup. You can strain just about anything.
I really like a three-size set like this. You can do basically anything you would want to with them. If you want, you can get a finer mesh strainer too, but I find those are more for cooking than for baking. Mine is a Kitchenaid model they don’t make anymore, but this is equivalent. As with a lot of other kitchen tools, I prefer these with all-metal construction, so you don’t have to worry about plastic cracking over time.
What about those mechanical flour sifters everyone’s mom had back in the day? They’re fine, but unnecessarily complex. I own one, and I can’t remember the last time I bothered to pull it out.
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7: Thermometers for Every Purpose
A lot of baking involves cooking things “until golden” or other visual indicators. If that’s not precise enough for you, there are always recommended internal temperatures for things like bread and cakes to make sure they’re done.
I recommend three thermometers, though you’ll only be using one of them all the time.
First is an oven thermometer. These are all more or less the same so something like this works fine. You stick it in the oven to monitor temperatures. I find that a lot of ovens with digital controls aren’t actually quite as accurate as they claim to be, so it can be handy to know if your oven runs hot or cold compared to the temperature it claims to be.
Second is one of the priciest items on this list, but 100% worth it: a good Thermapen. They’re compact, they read instantly, they can be used to test surface temperature or internal temperature or even temperature of liquids, and they’re great for spot-checking. I absolutely love mine. It has completely replaced the wired probe thermometer in the picture above.
Third is a candy thermometer. I don’t use mine often (but I also don’t work with sugar candy often), but it can be useful for sticking on a pot to measure temperatures while tempering chocolate, for example. Mine is pretty old but it’s something like this.
Some people get infrared thermometers and wear by them. I’ve never tried one, so I can’t say whether or not it’s worth having. But hey, look at all the things I bake without it; it can’t be that essential, right?
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8: Baking Dishes, Cookie Sheets, and Assorted Pans
This section is where a lot of personal preference comes into play. You don’t need a muffin tin if you don’t want to bake muffins. You don’t need a loaf pan if you’re not planning traditional loaves of bread. You can do a lot with a couple of cookie sheets and some baking dishes, and then expand what you want from there.
If you’re a truly novice baker, though, I recommend a handful of basic dishes, mostly so you can try out different types of baking and decide what clicks with you. You don’t need a bundt cake pan or a tart pan or a doughnut pan, but a couple of basic baking dishes, some cookie sheets, and a couple of semi-specialty pans will cover most of the bases.
- Baking Dishes. I prefer glass for these. Pyrex used to be excellent here, so vintage Pyrex is top-tier, but these days they’re all kind of the same things. I recommend at least two, a 9×9” square baking dish and a 9×13″ rectangular baking dish. You can do a ton with just these two, plus they’re useful for cooking too. If you want a third, an 8×11″ pan is also good to have.
- Cookie Sheets. I like cookie sheets with rims on them, since I also use them for other cooking where liquids would otherwise escape and cause problems. I also highly recommend Nordicware cookie sheets. I have some cheaper cookie sheets and they warp in the heat and it’s always a pain. Half-sheet and quarter-sheet sizes are both handy but you probably don’t need full-sheet, at least until you decide you want to make a lot of cookies at once.
- Loaf pans. If you want to bake sandwich loaves of bread and not boules or other rustic loaves, a good loaf pan is great. They’re also good for some dessert baking, like swirl breads and coffee cakes. I have two of these from Wilton and I’m very pleased with them.
- Muffin Tins. Making muffins, cupcakes, and the occasional shaped roll in a muffin tin is a good way to get into baking, so a muffin tin like this one can do a lot of work. A 12-cup tin is fine, but a 24-cup tin might also be handy as well.
- Springform Pans. These are made for baking round cakes in a way that you can release the tension around the outside and remove it while having the cake accessible easily afterwards. I’ve gotten good use out of a basic springform pan, but don’t have any firm recommendations on brand here.
Any other kind of dish you want is also fine. Want to make miniature sweetrolls from your favorite video game? Want to bake doughnuts instead of fry them? Want to make novelty treats or mini muffins? All of those are options too. I just don’t consider them baking essentials the way I do the main styles here.
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9: Cooling Racks for Hot Items
Cooling racks are also very handy for quickly cooling a batch of cookies or letting a cake cool more quickly when you don’t want to shove it in the fridge.
Most cooling racks are basically the same thing, so basic cooling racks like these are perfect.
If you want to use your cooling racks in the oven as wire racks for cooking and baking, make sure that they are oven-safe and that they fit inside the rim of a cookie sheet or baking dish. I’m quite happy with my OXO wire rack, it’s strong, oven-safe, and durable. If you don’t intend to cook with them, anything that lifts up a baked good and lets air flow under it is good enough.
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| Ultra Cuisine Oven-Safe Stainless Steel Wire Cooling Racks (Set of 2) |
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10: The All-Star Stand Mixer
This might be a contentious opinion, but I think a stand mixer should be an essential part of every baker’s arsenal.
Yes, you can do just about any kind of baking by hand. You don’t need a machine to whisk or beat or cream together butter and sugar or knead dough for you. I should know, I’ve done it all by hand before.
But when you have to knead dough for half an hour to get a nicely-worked gluten in bread, or whisk cream for ages to make whipped cream, or whip egg whites into meringue, by hand? Look, if you’re a novice baker, you don’t want to do something that will leave you sore for days afterwards.
The gold standard for a stand mixer is, in my opinion, the classic Kitchenaid stand mixer. It’s a simple machine with a mixing bowl, a beater, a whisk, and a dough hook, as well as a shield to keep loose flour from flying everywhere. You can also buy add-ons like an ice shaver, pasta maker, or meat grinder, none of which are really for baking but all can be handy.
Do you NEED the name-brand Kitchenaid? Not necessarily. I think the combination of quality in manufacturing, warranty for service, and add-ons makes it a great purchase. If you buy a cheaper model from a different brand, it might be under-powered or burn out more easily. I figure this is a lifetime purchase, so get the good one.
I will say one thing: I highly recommend a mixer with a metal bowl. If you’ve watched the recent Bake-Off, you saw one of the contestants break the mixing bowl, and no one wants to have that happen. Glass is just too fragile. Stick with the steel.
Yes, it’s pricey. But the savings in blood, sweat, and tears will be worth it.
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Optional but Nice to Have Tools for Baking
Next up is my list of items that are nice to have, but aren’t essential for a novice baker. Some of these might be very handy depending on where you live, and some are useful for specific kinds of baking, but if you don’t know that you want to go in on that kind of baking, you don’t need them. You’ll see what I mean. I have a few product recommendations here, but for the most part, that’s something I can write about another time if you want me to.
On that note, if you’d like similar posts like this about more specific baking, like intermediate baking, bread baking, or cake baking, let me know in the comments!
Ingredient Keepers. I use these for flour and rice, but not for anything else. Personally, I think it’s a bit of a pain to transfer most ingredients from their original packaging to a container like this. But, I also don’t live in an area where humidity or pests are a problem. If you do, they might be critical. I use basic OXO-brand ingredient keepers and they work just fine.
Icing Spatulas. These are wonderful if you’re planning to ice cakes. They can also be handy sometimes, under the name “offset spatula”, for spreading batters out evenly in dishes. I have a couple of different sizes, so a set like this is what I would recommend. They aren’t super essential, though, since you can use rubber spatulas for almost all of the same tasks.
Other Machines. There are a lot of other machines you can get that can make your life easier, the same way a stand mixer does. But, they aren’t as essential, in my experience. A hand mixer, for example, I find more awkward to use, and you can’t set it and do something else the way you can with a stand mixer. A food processor can be handy to chop things and pulse together certain doughs, but for most purposes, a knife works fine. An immersion blender is nice and handy, but more for cooking than baking in my experience. Again, useful, but not essential.
Cookie Scoops. I have been on a quest to find cookie scoops that don’t wear out, and I think I’ve finally found some. This set of three different sized cookie scoops has, so far, been a lot more durable than the kind that have gears at the base of the handle and wear out quickly. Still, though, you don’t need a cookie scoop; a spoon works fine. They’re just handy, and kind of fun.
Piping Bags. If you want to get into cakes and cupcakes and icing cookies, by all means, get a piping bag set with a bunch of tips and nozzles. I have a whole kit myself, but I rarely use it, because decorating isn’t really my thing. If you only occasionally pipe icing, a plastic bag with the corner cut will do the job.
Silpats. Also known as silicone baking mats. These are fine. I have a bunch and I use them about half the time. They don’t do anything that parchment paper doesn’t do, except be reusable, really. If you don’t like waste and consumables, grab some. If you don’t mind parchment paper, you can skip the silicone mats.
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Baking Equipment Novices Don’t Need
The last section here is just a list of things I’ve seen recommended on other lists, but which I really don’t think you need. There’s an endless well of baking tools that exist as much for Instagram Reels or TikTok videos as for actual use, or just to make people money selling them to people who don’t need them.
My view is, if you’re spending money on tools you aren’t using, you’re going to feel bad about it. Baking should be a fun experience, a joy to learn and grow into, and if you get a tinge of regret every time you open a drawer and see tens or hundreds of dollars of stuff you never use, it’s going to take the wind out of your sails. So, avoid these unless you have a really good reason to buy them.
- Decorative stands. I’ve seen all kinds of chintzy little stands for utensils and tools, and if they bring you joy, sure, grab them. They really, really aren’t necessary, though.
- Bowl scrapers. These are like the tip of a rubber spatula without the handle, so you can get the little bits of dough or batter out of a mixing bowl. Why? Just use the rubber spatula.
- Unitaskers. There are a ton of little tools for specific tasks that you’ll use once a year and forget about. Those little rollers that poke holes in pie crust? Just use a fork. A bread lame to cut a decorative line in a bread loaf? Just use a knife or a razor. So many of these are gimmicks and they aren’t worth the space in a drawer.
So, there you have it: as comprehensive a list of baking tools as I can come up with, aimed at novices, with plenty of recommendations. What do you think? If you have any suggestions or feedback, I’d love to hear it, so let me know in the comments.