Best Baking Mat Reviews 2020

For as little as $14, you can find a nice, reusable baking mat that’ll likely last for a few years. For about $40, you can find a premium silicone mat that’ll likely last you for decades. Yes, that sounds like a sales pitch—“spend more and save money in the long-run!”—but with silicone mats, it’s absolutely true. In our research, we came across numerous veteran bakers who were buying their second or third baking mat because their previous baking mat finally became unusable after 10 or 15 years.

If you use your baking mat properly—cleaning it after each use, not sticking it in the bottom rack of your dishwasher, and not using it as a cutting board —you really won’t need to buy another for a long, long time. However, not everyone can afford to spend $40 on one baking mat, especially during the holidays, which is why we chose some products that are under $20.

Although a $15 mat likely won’t last a full decade for heavy bakers, it’ll last at least three to five years. A standard box of parchment (45 square feet of paper) costs about $4. If you’re buying three boxes of parchment or more a year, you definitely should invest in a baking mat.

You can always try to find a mat that’s a little cheaper than $15, and we did find mats that were around $8 to $12. For people who barely bake, a cheap baking mat should be okay, but for anyone who uses their oven more than 10 times a year, these cheaper mats will simply fall apart.

Usually, in cheap baking mats, the silicone isn’t all silicone—it’s silicone plus additives. Silicone itself can withstand lots of heat, but when you start adding additives, the additives react in weird ways. Have you ever owned a baking mat that began to smoke? It was probably additives in the silicone. Because the silicone exterior is shielding your delicate mouth and stomach from fiberglass, we recommend spending just a few dollars more to avoid mats with exposed fiberglass.

Baking mats tend to look the same—rectangular in shape, tan in the center, and color on the boarder. You can find ones that are printed with recipes or ones that have diameters for rolling out the perfect-sized pie, but your standard mat will likely be tan with a colored edge.

When you’re buying a mat, how can you tell their differences if they all look the same? Check the following features:

• Size: The standard size for most mats is about 16.5 x 11.6 inches, which will fit an average half-sized baking sheet or pan. You can find bigger or smaller mats, but measure your pans before you begin shopping, so you can quickly rule out ones that don’t fit your size requirements.
• Material: Most silicone baking mats are made with—you guessed it—silicone. The interior of the mat (the material hidden inside the center mesh) is almost always fiberglass. This is why it’s really important to never cut food (ever) on the baking mat itself.
• Temperature Range: Every mat we’ve seen can withstand temperatures as low as -40 degrees Fahrenheit, but the maximum heat temperature tends to vary. Some mats can only withstand 400 degrees Fahrenheit, while others can withstand up to 500. In comparison, parchment paper is only safe to use in ovens that are 420 degrees or less (any higher, and the edges of the paper will start to blacken and burn).
• Care: Silicone is very heat-resistant, which is why most baking mats are okay to go in the top rack (and the top rack only) of your dishwasher. We recommend hand-washing your mat in warm, soapy water, however, because this will help ensure its longevity.
• Design: This refers to the colors, the shape, and any patterns printed on the mat. Most mats are simple—a fiberglass middle covered in tan, silicone mesh with a colorful silicone boarder. Some, however, have template designs on them for making macaroons, cookies, pies, or candy. Others have recipes, metric conversions, and candy temperatures. These mats are great for beginner cooks and bakers, but also good for experienced chefs who don’t have a ton of baking expertise.
• Texture: One of the biggest misunderstandings about silicone mats is that people think they’re supposed to be smooth, because it’s a non-stick surface. However, the non-stick surface is actually tacky, and if it’s not tacky, then your mat probably won’t be non-stick. This tackiness shouldn’t come off even with repeated washings, so if you feel a stickiness on the mat, GOOD! If you try to scrub the “stickiness” off, you’re just wearing down the silicone exterior, which could expose the interior fiberglass.
• Warranty: Many companies offer a warranty on their baking mats, but some offer lifetime guarantees. These lifetime guarantee deals can be tricky sometimes because they ask the consumer to do a lot to ensure the warranty. However, most of the brands we selected offer hassle-free, no-questions-asked returns, and/or lifetime guarantees where they simply replace your product free of charge. If you’re new to the big world of baking mats, selecting one with an easy refund policy is a good idea in case you find yourself not liking the mat, or simply not using it.

Keep these features in mind! In the next section, we’ll talk about how these mats are constructed.

You'll notice that we're spelling silicone with an "e," because "silicone" and "silicon" are two different things. Silicon is a natural element that makes up 28 percent of the earth’s crust, while silicone is the manufactured combination of oxygen and silicon.

To make silicone baking mats, fiberglass sheets are pressed between two layers of silicone to create silicone-fiberglass sheets. These sheets end up on a massive, wrapping paper-type roll, which then has rectangular sections cut off it. Factory workers take these sections and use a machine to cut out the correct dimensions for whatever type of baking mat they’re creating. From there, the sheets are machine-stamped with a logo and border, and then heated along a conveyor belt. When the heating process is over, an inspector checks the mats to ensure none of the fiberglass is exposed. (This is a quality check—making sure the border looks good, the logo is right, etc., but they’re mainly looking for exposed fiberglass). But that’s not the end of it yet! The last step is vulcanization (and we aren’t talking about something from Star Trek).

Vulcanization is basically a curing process that a lot of rubber materials go through. Tires, shoe soles, and hoses, for example, all get vulcanized. It works by adding sulfur (or the equivalent) to make the rubber more durable. Vulcanization is what allows the mats to be rolled up and then unrolled without leaving any creases or marks, which makes it the most important step in the mat-making process.

Why, you ask? Well, here’s a science-based answer: rubber has long polymer chains, but these chains all move independently. If you poke a piece of natural rubber, your finger will leave an indentation that won’t go away. That’s independently moving chains in action. When the rubber is vulcanized, crosslinking occurs, which forces the polymer chains to move together. If you poke a piece of vulcanized rubber, your finger will leave an indentation, but this mark will disappear as soon as you move your finger away—that’s all the chains moving together!

When you buy a mat, you’re basically buying a fiberglass sandwich: silicone on top, silicone on bottom, fiberglass in the middle, and some nice colorful decoration on the border for aesthetic appeal. Because baking mats are super flexible and literally fiberglass, it’s extremely important that you never, ever use sharp objects on them. Fiberglass is hard to see, so it’s really easy for it to end up in your food (or mouth) without even noticing it.

You may not be able to cut on your baking mat, but there are lots of things you can do with it aside from just cooking or baking. Anyone who dips candies or fruit will love how useful the mats are in the kitchen. Because you don’t necessarily need a baking sheet for dipping food, you can simply lay two or three of the mats on your countertop (giving you lots of space)!

You can also leave your baked goods, such as sugar cookies, on the mats until they’re cool enough to decorate. Decorating cookies on the mat itself is useful because you don’t have to worry about getting frosting or sprinkles all over the floor, and the non-stick surface makes it easy for your kids to pick the cookies up without needing a spatula. Also, the cookies won’t break. There’s nothing worse than an angel-shaped sugar cookie with no head.

You can also use your mat for non-food crafts, such as rolling out salt dough or homemade play dough. For people who live in really humid places, the baking mats are great for doughs—both edible and inedible—because there’s no issue with rolling the dough out and having it stick to the countertop. While you can add more flour to your dough to make it less sticky, the humidity will always make it a little bit sticky, and you'll risk accidentally over-flouring your delicious dough.

If you’re worried about kitchen space, baking mats take up nearly none. You can store them right on your baking sheets, for example, or you can roll them up and push them into a drawer. As science has shown, vulcanization will keep them from retaining that rolled shape. If your mat has been put away for six months, you may need to re-flatten it underneath a baking sheet, but it’ll eventually go back to being totally flat.

Although it hopefully won’t happen to you, some baking mats will end up smoking or blackening when subjected to heat over 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Sometimes, a listed temperature max—500 degrees F, for example—will be the maximum amount of heat silicone can take. However, some mats have a lot of additives in their silicone that can’t withstand such high heat (this is usually the case with cheaper baking mats), so they burn instead.

There haven’t been any studies that show these additives, when burned and breathed in or consumed, are harmful. But if you find your mat blackening at a temperature below the product’s listed maximum, contact the company right away to get a new one. It’s possible you just got a mat with an uneven distribution of silicone and additives, but most companies are willing to make things right with you by sending another mat for free. Be aware that spending more on a mat doesn’t necessarily mean the silicone won’t have additives, but it does mean that the additives are probably very minimal. They may make up maybe 0.5 percent of the whole product, for example.

Finally, just in case you missed it before, never, ever cut on your silicone baking mat and risk exposing the fiberglass! We know we’ve said it a lot already, but a little reminder is never a bad thing.