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See why.The Best Tart Pans
For making crisp-looking tarts, pans with a sharper, fluted design have the edge.
Published Mar. 1, 2017. Appears in Cook's Illustrated January/February 2007
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See Everything We TestedWhat You Need To Know
Shallow, fluted tart pans can give a home baker’s quiche or fruit tart a professional look. But does it matter which tart pan you buy? To find out, we made a savory tomato tart with a pat-in-the-pan crust and a classic lemon tart with a pâte sucrée (traditional French sweet pastry) using five different models priced from about $9.00 to $27.00.
We considered only pans with removable bottoms—and if you’ve ever tried chiseling a delicate tart out of a solid pan, you understand why. Pans with removable bottoms allow the baker to remove the rim before sliding the tart off the disk base and onto a serving plate. As for nonstick tart pans, our past tests showed that their slick surfaces were a slight disadvantage when pressing dough into the crevices of the pan because the dough slumped down and didn’t adhere as well. But with formulas for nonstick coatings always changing, we decided to reconsider nonstick tart pans to see if new models would perform better than their older cousins. We ended up with three nonstick steel pans and two traditional-finish pans (one made of tinned steel and one aluminum).
As we rolled pastry dough into the pans, we were in for a surprise: Whether the pans were nonstick or not, they were all equally fine to work with, and the doughs more or less stayed put and didn’t slump. The traditional-finish pans had a tacky surface that was a bit easier to use, really holding on to the dough as we pressed it in place. But in the end, none of the pans presented problems for rolling or pressing dough into the fluted grooves.
Not only were the nonstick pans not a problem, but there were several areas—browning and release—where they performed better than traditional-finish pans. A good tart pan should give you golden, even browning—any dark-brown or too-pale spots mar presentation as well as texture and flavor. For even, golden browning on both savory and sweet crusts, pans with dark nonstick coatings outperformed the shiny, lighter finishes of the traditional-finish pans. This makes sense because darker pans hold heat better.
Though removable sides make removing a tart from the pan easier, the final shimmy of the tart off the disk bottom and onto the serving plate takes some finesse. Here the nonstick coating on three of the pans helped reduce the potential for tart breakage. The sticky finish on the aluminum pan, which had been a small asset when rolling out the dough, made removing the tart from the base a little harder than it had to be (although it still released adequately).
The wavy edges on a tart pan’s rim, called flutes, give the finished tart its professional, polished appearance. As the tarts cooled, we not...
Everything We Tested
Highly Recommended
- Edges: 3 stars out of 3.
- Release: 3 stars out of 3.
- Browning: 3 stars out of 3.
This pan was the priciest of the lot but produced perfectly even golden-brown tarts with crisp, professional-looking edges. Its nonstick coating made the transfer from pan to plate a cinch.
Recommended
- Edges: 2 stars out of 3.
- Release: 3 stars out of 3.
- Browning: 3 stars out of 3.
Though edges were less crisp on tarts from this pan, it was a solid performer at a bargain price, giving us flawless release and browning—plus, it’s dishwasher-safe.
- Edges: 3 stars out of 3.
- Release: 3 stars out of 3.
- Browning: 2 stars out of 3.
This carbon-steel pan browned quickly, hitting the mark at the minimum prescribed baking times. But it yielded crisp edges, and the nonstick coating made release easier.
Recommended with reservations
- Edges: 3 stars out of 3.
- Release: 0.5 stars out of 3.
- Browning: 0.5 stars out of 3.
This thin, lightweight tinned steel pan turned out tarts with crisp edges but uneven browning, and release was not quite as flawless as with the nonstick pans.
Not Recommended
- Edges: 2 stars out of 3.
- Release: 2 stars out of 3.
- Browning: 0.5 stars out of 3.
The slightly sticky surface of this aluminum pan helped the dough really stick, but its light color made browning a bit uneven. Removing tarts was a tad tricky, and the pan was scratch-prone.
Reviews you can trust
Reviews you can trust
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