The Difficulty of Degrees of Danger

Less than a month until the release of Feast On Your Life! A link to book launch below.

Dear Tamar:

This is perhaps a prosaic question, but it’s been causing me consternation: If a piece of cookware has a certain temperature rating, can I cook at the absolute upper limit of that temperature rating? I bake a lot of gluten-free bread (I’m a celiac) at 450 degrees, and I’ve noticed that my loaf pans’ nonstick coating is flaking off. Is this normal wear and tear? Were we mildly poisoned by the coating before I noticed and started using copious amounts of parchment paper? If a cookware brand says it’s oven safe up to 450 degrees, does that mean I should stick to bread that bakes at, say, 425 degrees? Why are the loaf pans that are oven safe up to 500 or 700 degrees only available in bulk for commercial bakers? How can I buy new loaf pans with any kind of confidence that they’ll do the job well?

-Degrees of Danger

Dear Degrees of Danger,

In my first book, I wrote defiantly—and a little pugnaciously—that no one should use their microwave unless they were training to become a laser beam. The idea was that any kitchen tool should teach the cook using it a lesson about cooking. Microwaves failed my test. I also wrote an entire chapter on the silliness of every best-of list of kitchen tools in every cookbook and every magazine. These were, in my my estimation, insidious capitalist propaganda. If you bothered to care about such things as the quality of your pans, or debased yourself by using anything more modern than a stick, you were asking the tool to do your work for you. You should be able to cook with whatever is there was my uncompromising message.

It’s a good message—one I continue to spread with a far lighter hand. But in my kitchen here in Madrid, there is a microwave, and I love it. I love using it for heating up last night’s chickpeas and rice. I love how quickly it thaws beans frozen in glass jars. Now that I have a convection stovetop, I love the microwave for popcorn. (Convection makes it nearly impossible to jostle a pot back and forth. Burners simply shut off in the absence of ferrous contact.) When we moved into the apartment, there was a cache of nonstick pots and pans. After several days, I packed them into a cardboard box, stored them under the stairs, and went about buying used cast iron and heavy stainless steel pots and pans. I needed baking sheets immediately, so I bought the cheapest—and coincidentally nonstick—ones I could find. I already regret their buckling at high temperatures and cover them with parchment whenever I use them.

I’m no longer a zealot about simply using whatever you have. I’ve come to appreciate such modern conveniences as a microwave. (I can’t think of another appliance I newly appreciate, but give me ten years. I’ll come around to something.) I read your question and thought of all the years I baked in any loaf pan that happened to be in arms’ reach, ignoring any buckling, insisting that there was nothing that a little parchment and butter couldn’t solve. And then I thought, for perhaps the first time in my life, that there might be better and worse loaf pans, and that it might make sense to have the better ones.

I know you asked about the temperature rating of a pan, and how much to trust it. But if your pan is shedding, it’s time to move on. The kind of coating that used to be called “nonstick” and considered inviolable has proven itself quick to retire and very susceptible to scratching-by-scrubbing. Rather than trying to find breads that bake at lower temperatures, or subject any of my pans to repeated high heat as a test, I decided that I should, instead, find you new pans.

I read a paean to glass loaf pans, which I hoped would resolve everything. Glass is happy at quite high heat, isn’t coated in toxic chemicals, and releases baked goods easily. But—the paean conceded—because glass insulates, rather than conducts heat, a glass loaf pan heats up more slowly than a metal one. The rise of a glass-baked loaf is likely to be lower, due to the slower-to-heat container. Also: after baking, glass-baked loaves will take longer to cool down than metal-baked ones—again, because of glass’s insulating qualities—resulting in a drier crumb.

I turned to several of the kind of lists I usually avoid: the Best ofs and Our Picks and Five Faves sort. Though I sound contemptuous writing about it, both because I was on a hunt for you and not me and because I’ve come to the slow recognition that there might be wisdom in getting better pans, I thoroughly enjoyed my browsing.

Thinking of the worrisome dark flakes you peeled off, I was drawn to heavy, solid ceramic loaf pans from Sur Le Table and Caraway Home. These seemed likely to endure the tests of both temperature and time, and can easily be heated to above 500 degrees. All of my ceramic cook wear, even the Le Creuset from which I once had to chip burnt sourdough with a chisel, remains impregnable to anything, including chisels.

I thought of ending things there. But in truth, I’d read recommendations, at some point in every article and list, for commercial grade heavy gauge metal loaf pans, preferably uncoated. It seems that, pretty ideas about glass and ceramic aside, metal is what the professionals use, and what you would use and probably should use if you could a) find them and b) still get your loaves out.

This obvious conclusion gives me an opportunity to share one of my greatest culinary resources and secrets—the latter just because I don’t have that many people to tell. At a magical site called Webrestaurantstore.com, you can get professional grade loaf pans, one by one, at prices that befit the scale of restaurant purchasing. You can choose among aluminum, Pullman, and stainless steel. You can, by the same logic of restaurant needs, buy packs of parchment pan liners made to fit whichever pan you’ve chosen, at prices hovering under ten cents each.

Dear cook, you asked about temperatures and I’ve taken you shopping. But I think, in the circumstances, it behooves you not to change your loaf pans instead of your baking. It’s a lesson I’m only learning myself now, hoping it protects me against whatever dangers arrive, in whatever degrees.

Readers, come see the esteemed Malcom Gladwell and me live for a recording of Revisionist History about Feast On Your Life at the 92NY on December 4! Tickets still available but going fast!!!