Parchment paper, also commonly known as "baking paper," "bakery release paper," or sometimes just "bakery paper", is paper that has been treated and coated to make it non-stick. This allows you to effortlessly line your baking pans with parchment paper instead of the alternative, applying and eventually scrubbing oil or grease off of your sheet pans. Parchment paper is disposable, so once you are done baking on it you can simply toss it out!
Parchment paper should not be confused with wax paper, which is also non-stick due to its wax coating, but is not made to withstand high heat from the oven. If you use wax paper in the oven, it will cause the wax to melt.
You can use parchment paper to replace wax paper but cannot use wax paper for high heat baking.
Alternatively, parchment paper is designed to be subjected to high heats. It is a fantastic tool for baking sticky or greasy fried foods, because it allows for such easy clean up when you're done. No more oiling, flouring, or buttering your baking pans before they go in the oven! Zenlogy parchment sheets are fantastic because not only is it perfect for baking every type of dish you can imagine, but it is also pre-cut and perfectly sized to fit into your standard sized baking pans!
Zenlogy Parchment paper is perfect for all sorts of baking and our cookiers think it is the best parchment for cookies. When it's time to bake a large batch, you can have your sheet pans lined with parchment in record speed. Parchment sheets are also excellent to roll your dough between, like Jenn from @jennscookiejar below, because it does not require you use extra flour to avoid the rolling pin sticking to your flour.
And maybe you don't have time to bake all of those cookies that you cut today -- no problem, parchment paper also stores well in the freezer so you can store your pre-baked goodies until you are ready to put them in the oven!
Parchment paper can be used to bake fish using the en Papillote method. By folding the fish and some veggies into a makeshift parchment paper envelope, you can create a packet that holds in the moisture and steams the fish and veggies from the inside!
There are all sorts of creative ways to use parchment. Taking inspiration from the en Papillote method for cooking fish, we created a parchment envelope to hold some popcorn kernels, and popped them inside without making a mess of our pan or our stovetop. The bag it was popped in works perfectly for serving!
Parchment paper is available in both bleached (white) and unbleached (brown) sheet options. Because bleached parchment paper has been shown to contain toxic dioxin, unbleached parchment paper is considered to be a better, healthier alternative so you are not cooking chemicals into your food.
Parchment paper is usually coated with silicone or quilon to give it a non-stick coating though silicone is a safer option than quilon.
Zenlogy parchment paper is unbleached and coated with silicone.
Parchment paper is semi-transparent, which also makes it a great choice for tracing icing transfers onto (both as practice and to apply to finished cookies and cakes). Icing dries and hardens quickly on Zenlogy parchment paper and due to the non-stick nature, they easily release from the paper when you're ready to apply them to your baked goodies!
Parchment paper is amazing! It can be used in so many different ways, and we have only discussed how to use it in the kitchen! If you're interested in seeing other ways parchment paper can be used, check out our blog post about Crafting with Parchment Paper!
Happy baking everyone!
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