The Best Pastry Brushes

This brush had the thickest head of bristles in the testing, allowing it to pick up and deposit the greatest volume of egg wash, oil, butter, or glaze in a single pass. And because the bristles weren’t too densely packed, they still felt agile and precise. At a uniform 1.8 inches, they were the ideal length for most tasks (though some testers preferred brushes with slightly longer bristles for getting into the nooks and crannies on fruit tarts). While not as grippy as some, its medium-length, relatively fat, varnished wood handle was still comfortable to hold. Additionally, it lost the fewest bristles during testing.

This pastry brush had a relatively thick head of uniform-length bristles, which picked up plenty of egg wash or olive oil. The bristles were a little shorter than we prefer. They were also a tad stiff and densely packed, which made the brush’s touch a little less delicate, but it still did a great job with most tasks. This pastry brush had a buttery smooth wood handle that made it comfortable to hold.

This brush’s head was not as thick as we prefer, but it did an acceptable job at picking up butter or oil and distributing it evenly on raw dough. The bristles were a touch dense and short, so it was a little trickier to brush liquids into hard-to-reach nooks and crannies. The handle is fairly wide and may be less comfortable for those with small hands to hold.

With a thick head of uniformly sized bristles that were just a tad longer than our winner’s, this model picked up plenty of liquid and was relatively agile. Although we slightly preferred rubbery handles, its fat, varnished wood handle was still comfortable to hold. The problem? It lost quite a few bristles over the course of testing, leaving some doubt as to its longevity.

This pastry brush did a good job on all the tasks, though its wispy bristles didn’t pick up quite as much liquid and were a touch harder to control due to their inconsistent length. Testers loved the grippy, rubbery material of the handle, though its shape forced them to choke up on the thinnest part near the head, limiting the number of ways they could hold the brush and cramping their hands a little.

This brush’s smooth plastic handle was a bit narrow and slippery, especially when wet or greasy. The head is quite wide and the bristles are very long—while it was able to pick up and distribute a lot of liquid, this large size was excessive and made application a little messier and less precise. Because the bristles were so long and packed fairly loosely into the brush head, they were hard to control and made us feel like we would accidentally splatter liquid where we didn’t want it.

The bristles on this petite, paintbrush-like model were shorter, thinner, and less uniform in length than our top choices, picking up slightly less liquid and feeling less precise and controllable as a result. It shed a number of bristles over the course of testing, and its rough, unfinished wood handle had testers worrying about splinters. Still, this brush acquitted itself well on all tasks, and it was the cheapest model to boot.

With a thin head of extra-long, wispy bristles, this model excelled at applying glaze to the nooks and crannies of the fruit tart. But for most tasks, both the long bristles and the long handle felt a bit oversize, “like using a paint stirrer instead of a paintbrush,” as one tester put it. The manufacturers of this model recommended soaking the head in water for an hour before the first use to reduce bristle loss, but even after we’d taken this precaution, it shed several bristles during testing.