Essential Equipment for Pastries

Our winning rolling pin capably handles dough for pie, cookies, pizza, and pastries with gentle weight and a slightly textured surface that holds a dusting of flour for less sticking. In this class we use it to roll out our laminated dough turn after turn, but also to beat and roll the butter square that gets layered inside the dough.

Our favorite pizza wheel is comfortable to hold, and we liked its sharp, visible blade for making precise cuts, which is useful for cutting the dough triangles necessary for the croissants in this class, and the squares for the kouign-amann. If you don't have a pizza wheel, you can use a chef's knife and a ruler.

A sturdy rimmed baking sheet is essential for baking pastries with ample air circulation and even browning. We bake all of the pastries in this class on our winning 18 by 13-inch pan. A smaller pan, also known as a quarter sheet pan, is a bonus as it’s easier to fit into the fridge and freezer when chilling your laminated dough.

When precision is key, as it is for the pastries in this class, we always suggest pulling out a ruler. We use it to roll dough into rectangles of specific dimensions, and to make evenly-spaced markings along the edges to cut out perfect triangles, like for our croissants. Our favorite kitchen ruler is easy to read, use, and clean. The inches are divided into 32nds on one side and 16ths on the other.

Plastic wrap is essential for storing, freezing, and keeping food fresh, and when it comes to the pastries in this class we use greased plastic time and again to protect the dough from drying out when chilling in the fridge. We also use it to cover baking sheets of shaped pastries while freezing, before transferring them to a zipper-lock bag.

To maintain the crisp exterior of our palmiers and the caramel crust on our kouign amann air circulation is key during the cooling process. A thin wire rack elevates cooling foods, and the smaller grid of our winning rack prevents anything from falling through.