Stay up-to-date with Ava J’zs Soul Food & More and the latest recipes and kitchen hacks!
Written by The Shifrah Combiths on thekitchn.com
My baking sheets are the ones I chose with the scanning gun when we registered for our wedding 13 years ago. They’ve served us faithfully through many rounds of everything from roasted Brussels sprouts to dozens of chocolate chip cookies. And they show it.
I don’t know when I decided that my baking sheets would just have a patina, but it’s been a very long time since they’ve been perfectly clean. I don’t mind their overall well-loved (read: darkened) appearance, but the sticky, slightly raised veins do actually make them feel dirty. I’ve been wanting to clean these off for a while, but I haven’t yet been in the mood for a scrubbing battle and so they’ve remained as they are.
Methods
But then I found some methods online (including this one from One Good Thing by Jillee) which had DOWNTIME as the key component. That got me excited. I’m good at letting things sit! I already had everything I needed, too! I pulled out my baking sheets, located our hydrogen peroxide, and got to work.
How-To
Within less than an hour, my baking soda paste was taking on a rusty hue. It’s as if the years of burnt-on grease were being siphoned off my baking sheets, and I couldn’t help doing a couple test scrapes to see what the baking sheets looked like underneath.
Here’s the thing: For baking sheets like mine, you’re not going to be able to go back to the pristine, untouched-days-of-yore look. But you will be able to get off all the nasty, sticky bits and get it as clean and smooth as you possibly can. If you employ this method more regularly and from closer to the beginning of your baking sheet’s life, you’ll stand an excellent chance of keeping these bakeware workhorses as unmarred as the day you brought them home.