Chicago Metallic 69609 Professional Nonstick Perforated Baguette Pan

I've been working on making the perfect French bread baguette. (It's delicious with goat cheese and some artichoke-lemon spread, but that's another review.) I have an excellent bread machine recipe for the dough but letting the bread proof on my pizza stone before cooking it resulted in slightly "squashed" loaves that were more like narrow ellipses than circles. Although I love my stone's effect on a loaf's crisp crust, I finally ordered this baguette pan.

Mindful of the recommendations in other reviews, I sprayed the pan with cooking oil before using it. I also tossed some corn meal on it. (What can I say? I like its effect on the crust.) I laid the dough in the pan's "troughs," let it rise, then moved it to a preheated oven to bake. Unable to part with the stone entirely, I placed the pan on top of it. The loaves turned out beautifully. They're almost perfectly round, about 2" in diameter; the crust was even crispier than when I used my stone, and it's...Read more

This has to be my favorite pan for making the outside crust on the bread very crisp. It seems that the heat flows better through this pan with the perforation. While the pan is very sturdy and of a heavy gauge, it should provide you with wonderful bread in the years to come. Be sure to give the pan a quick spray of non-stick spray before cooking, but you would do this when making any kind of bread. The three loaves gives you just enough bread so that there won't be any major dicussions of who is getting the last piece of hot bread. If you are a bread maker and haven't given bagettes a try, this would be the idea pan to do this with.

I purchased this product about a year ago, when I was trying to make my own sub buns but couldn't quite get the height I wanted making them free-form. This is perfect for that! I get 6 large sub buns or 9 smaller ones. Nothing is better for your lunchmeat or chicken breasts than putting them on a fresh bun from your oven! I have since made the baguettes and use the pot of boiling water and spraying the inside of the oven mentioned in previous reviews, and they turn out wonderful! I have NEVER had a problem with the bread going thru the holes as mentioned previously, and all I do is spray lightly with Pam. This is a wonderful addition to the bread baker's kitchen and for the price you can't beat it.