Rolling pins are essential baking tools, but their different styles can cause confusion. Why are some conical and others cylindrical? Which materials are best? Need more than one?
Ultimately, the best needle for you is the one you are most comfortable using. Some bakers swear by their grandmother's wooden pins with handles, while others prefer the consistency of a straight pin. If you can roll out regular dough forms of an even thickness, that's all that matters. With an understanding of good rolling technique, a baker can use almost any peg to achieve his goal.
However, different styles of rolling pin have advantages for certain tasks, so I tested them to find where each excelled. With each spinner, I wrapped bunches of Butter Pie Crust to assess the ability of pins to form a regular and even circle, Sugar cookies to see how evenly he can roll the dough to a certain thickness, and Blitz Patisserie to evaluate how the pin turned out with a large volume of adhesive dough rolled to specific dimensions.
Ahead of pie and cookie baking season, here's a guide to our various pins and how to choose the best one for your experience level and the project at hand.
Jen Bakos
The most versatile rolling pin: Straight pin
Store: Straight pin
For recipes that call for flat, even dough at any thickness, and especially for large-scale projects, reach for this straight rolling pin. This long 19″ pin-style rolling pin performed well at every task in my testing, especially when rolling out a large batch of pastry into an 8″ x 20″ rectangle. Its lightly textured wooden surface held enough flour to kept dough from sticking, and its simple shape and even 2″ thickness made it easy to keep even pressure on any dough. Bonus: Its heavy, soft ends are also perfect for pressing pretzels or candies to incorporate into your recipes.
This rolling pin is a little on the heavier and heavier side, but if you only have room for one rolling pin in your baker's tool bag, this one is more versatile.
Test results:
- Pie Dough: Very good
- Cookie Dough: Excellent
- Puff Pastry: Excellent
Photography by Kristin Teig; food styling by Liz Neily
Best Rolling Pin for Pie Dough: French tree
Store: French tree
This French-style rolling pin is slightly tapered at each end, allowing you to apply more or less pressure on each side as you roll your dough, and is slightly narrower than the straight rolling pin, starting at 1″ at the ends and 1 3 /4″ on center. This makes it very maneuverable and easy to rotate as you roll, allowing you to push the dough where you want it to go. In my testing, this needle gave the best circle of pie dough, allowing me to easily maintain a round shape.
I was also able to get very even results during my cookie dough and puff pastry tests with this pin, but the doughs did stick a bit more all over the board and it may take some practice for less experienced bakers to understand its design. . to achieve equal thicknesses.
Test results:
- Pie Dough: Excellent
- Cookie Dough: Very good
- Puff pastry: Very good
Photography by Kristin Teig; food styling by Liz Neily
Best Cookie Dough Specialty Tree: 1/4 inch uniform pastry pin
Store: 1/4 inch uniform pastry pin
When you're making roll-and-cut cookies, keeping the dough flat and even across its surface is a must. If the dough is thick in the center and thin at the edges, your pressed cookies will be different thicknesses; as a result, they will ripen at different rates. To take all the guesswork out of the equation, use this clever uniform pastry pin. The cylinders on each end hold the pin exactly 1/4″ above the work surface, meaning your dough will be exactly 1/4″ thick all around. The cookie dough I rolled with this rolling pin was perfectly even and created very uniform cookies without any thin spots. It's also a long pin – 18″ in workable length! – so you can roll out a lot of dough at once.
Of course, this particular pin is only suitable for recipes that call for dough that calls for an exact 1/4″ thickness (although we also offer the same style of pin in a 1/8″ deep). Because the dough will only be 1/4″ thick, you are bound by the thickness, not the dimensions of the dough. When rolling the pie dough with this pin, I couldn't get the rounds to stretch to a 12″ diameter — u it stopped at 9″ when it reached its 1/4″ thickness and wouldn't go any further. Plus, its edges get in the way when you're rolling puff pastry larger than 18″. It's a specialized tool, but if you bake cookies often, it's a useful tool to have in your arsenal.
Test results:
- Pie Dough: Right
- Cookie Dough: Excellent
- Puff pastry: Right
Photography by Danielle Sykes; food styling by Liz Neily
Use the right needle for you
While the options above are great for most tasks, the best needle is the one you're most comfortable using. Many American bakers grew up learning to bake with a glove-style rolling pin like we did Maple Turntable and if you're partial to this style, it's another great choice! The handles are comfortable to hold and performed well during all three tests, with little extra effort required when rotating back and forth.
You can find all these pins and other useful baking tools at King Arthur Store.
Cover photo by Rick Holbrook; food styling by Kaitlin Wayne.
