The Best Baking Sprays

If you bake a lot, you should consider baking spray. It is a fast and easy one-step product that lets you skip the messy, tedious traditional process of greasing and flouring pans for baking. We specifically call for baking spray in recipes that are particularly sticky and when we use a Bundt pan with lots of nooks and crannies.

Cooking spray has become ubiquitous in home kitchens. Baking spray, however, is less common. For both, the main ingredient is an oil such as palm, soybean, or coconut oil. They also typically contain emulsifiers such as lecithin or mono- and diglycerides that keep the ingredients combined in the can and help the oil adhere to the surface of cookware or bakeware.

To discharge these ingredients into the air, a can needs to be pressurized. Pressure inside a can is created in two ways. One setup mixes a pressurized propellant gas (such as propane or butane) with the oil. The second setup, known as a bag-on-valve dispensing system, places the oil inside a bag, separate from the pressurized propellant gas (either compressed air or nitrogen), which fills the space between the bag and the can.

Baking spray typically—though not always—also contains flour, cornstarch, or wheat starch. These starch particles create space between the baked goods and the pan that insulates the batter or dough from the metal pan. Because of this insulation, the food cooks a bit more slowly and, more importantly, releases easily. Some baking sprays with starch also contain silicon dioxide, a fine powder that prevents clumping, which is important for even distribution of the starch.

One of the products we tested isn’t a spray—it’s a liquid mixture you apply to the pan and spread into a thin layer by hand. We included it because it’s marketed as a solution to the tedious task of greasing and flouring pans. We wanted to know how it stacks up against typical baking sprays. Here’s what we found.

• Round Spray Patterns: We preferred cans that sprayed in a circular shape, the most functional shape for coverage in most baking pans. It’s also the spray pattern we’re most familiar with, so we could anticipate where the spray was going to land. We found the pattern of the spray is due to the shape of the channel the oil travels up before being dispersed, as opposed to the shape of the nozzle itself. 

• Straight Spouts: We preferred spouts that were angled straight ahead as they released spray directly in front of the can. We could anticipate where the spray was going to land, which helped us efficiently and cleanly cover our pans.

• Moderately Powerful Spray: During testing we noticed that sprays left their canisters at different rates. Cans that dispersed mixture quickly, but not too powerfully, were best. With these baking sprays, we were able to cover the pan efficiently without excess spray splattering outside the pan.

• Sprays with Starch: We found a few advantages to using sprays that contain a starch. The first was visibility. The combination of propellant and starch caused several sprays to become foamy and white or cream-colored as they left the can, making it easy to tell that our bakeware was evenly coated. The second advantage was easy release. This is key for ultrasticky recipes and recipes in which you’re using older bakeware or bakeware with a damaged nonstick coating. The third advantage is insulation. The starch in baking spray provides a small layer of insulation between the batter or dough and the pan. We specifically call for baking spray in our financiers recipe because that insulation helps form the ideal flat tops. Without it, the exterior of the financier sets first, while the middle continues to rise, resulting in a dome. This is especially important when baking in mini-muffin tins as the ratio of circumference to area is greater.

• Angled Spouts: The product we tested with the bag-on-valve dispensing system also had an angled spout that sprayed upward instead of straight ahead. This positioning made it harder to estimate where the spray would go, and we often missed the pan, covering the surrounding area instead.

• Overly Powerful Sprays: One canister sprayed with such force that it reminded us of a fire extinguisher. Its spray radius was also larger than that of the other sprays and came out with such power that splatters flew outside of the intended area and around the kitchen.

• Non-Aerosol Options: When testing one product, a liquid mixture that comes in a squeeze bottle, we placed a dime-size dollop in the pan and then used a paper towel to smear it over the inside of the pan. We didn’t mind spreading the solution by hand when using a simple 8-inch square baking pan, but we found the process to be tedious and time-consuming when using a more intricate Bundt pan or a muffin tin. While this product created a successful nonstick coating, we prefer the convenience of sprays.