The Basic Tools That Every Home Baker Needs

Martha often says you need "the right tool for the job," and as anyone who has tried to roll out pastry dough using a water glass or used a liquid cup measure to measure dry ingredients can attest, using the correct tool makes all the difference when you are baking. We're not ones for fussy single-use gadgets, though. Instead, the tools our test kitchen team outline here are the absolute essentials. And you'll be pleased to hear that they all are reasonably priced; most are under $20 and all will last you through years of baking cakes, cookies, and pies. They are hard-working utensils, and you might even have a few in your baking arsenal already.

A cooling rack, which is called for in most of our baking recipes, is on our list of must-have tools. You know the drill: The cake or cookies are removed from the oven and transferred to a cooling rack. After some time on the rack in the baking pan, the cake or cookies are removed from it and finish cooling on the rack. An oven thermometer is no less essential. Why? Your oven may run hot or not reach the desired temperature, but how would you know unless you have a means of checking? Less well known but also super useful is the offset spatula, a tool our food editors use every time they frost a cake. Use an inexpensive offset serrated knife for chopping chocolate for ganache or nuts for a cookie recipe. A pastry brush tackles quite a few tasks, from brushing egg washes on scones or glazes on cookies to getting butter into the hard-to-reach corners of a Bundt pan.

Ready to see our full list? Take a look in the slides ahead, then consider adding these inexpensive and incredibly useful basic baking tools to your kitchen. Trust us—you'll be glad you did.