Baking Paper

To start with, I guess baking paper is an item used by most of us in day-to-day life for baking either cakes or cookies as well as for baking meat pieces and wraps. As is expected, baking paper has got its name because it has been used widely for baking and cooking purposes. However, have you ever wondered, what properties of baking paper make it suitable for the process? Well, let us talk more on this through the paragraphs coming up.

Well, using baking or parchment paper for baking is a common practice mainly because it can tolerate high temperatures without spoiling the food recipes in any which way. This makes me conclude that baking paper is essentially temperature resistant, it being one of its unique physical properties. To understand more, we need to know what goes in its making. Baking paper is made from paper pulp as any normal paper is, however, it is later on dipped or bathed in either sulfuric acid or zinc chloride (acid treatment). After treating it with either of these solutions, the paper loses the chemicals and is gelatinized or coated with silicone or oil based coatings. This is followed by drying which is absolutely essential for the material to get cross linked and sulfurized. The result is the parchment or baking paper which is extremely light weight, high density, heat and temperature resistant along with being stable.

Uses

• First of all, if you check the texture of the baking paper you will realize that it is relatively oily and glossy which means there is no need to apply oil or butter on it as well as on the baking sheet or dish. You can just keep the food items on the baking paper and it would serve the purpose.
• Apart from baking purposes, it can be used for steaming vegetables as well. What you need to do is cover the vegetables with the paper and cook them. In this way, the vegetables will retain their vitamins and minerals.

If you check, there are several types of baking papers available in the market today with variety of shapes and colors as well as the ones which can be reused and composted in case they are eco friendly. However, it is absolutely essential to buy the ones which are free of chlorine and of course unbleached. They should obviously be heat resistant, safe to use for ovens and microwaves, as well as gluten and allergen free. There are few brands which use toxic chemicals like quilon for coating the baking paper however, make sure the one you buy is silicone coated only.