The Best Quarter Sheet Pans for Baking Cookies and Roasting Veggies

The standard dimensions of a quarter sheet pan are 13 by 9 inches, the same as a typical baking dish, which means that they can still hold a ton of food. Too often, a half-sheet is just too large for the chicken cutlets and roasted broccoli that I’m cooking for my household of two people. All that extra space can lead to uneven cooking, too; it’s a real bummer when half of your cookies are perfect, and the other half are a little undercooked. With the quarter sheet, though, I rarely have that problem. I can bake four or six cookies — a perfect amount for two adults, and the rest of the dough goes in the freezer to bake later — with no problem.

For years, I was devoted to the Nordic Ware brand, largely because its quarter-sheet pans are affordable, durable, and consistently recommended by other bakers. I still have the first one I purchased — it was originally part of a Costco 3-pack — and it has been well-used. It’s not a perfect pan, though — its aluminum construction means that it has to be hand-washed unless you want it to develop a weird film caused by oxidation, and despite its hefty construction, it is still prone to warping.

Unsatisfied with my sheet pan situation, I scoured the internet in search of the best pans for pretty much any cooking situation. Here’s what I found.

How we tested

To put these sheet pans under the figurative magnifying glass, I baked multiple batches of cookies (snickerdoodles and peanut butter, if you must know) and roasted both frozen and fresh veggies on each sheet. All of the pans were subjected to the same (crappy, builder-grade) oven and washed by hand to determine exactly how difficult each would be to clean. To gauge their long-term durability, we consulted customer reviews while weighing them against our experiences during multiple rounds of wear and tear.

The best overall: Great Jones Little Sheet

Available in a chic array of colors, including magenta and the wildly popular cobalt blue, Great Jones’s Little Sheet feels a little bit like a gimmick. I’ve been tricked by these newcomer kitchen brands before, so I was admittedly skeptical that the Great Jones pan had any chance of winning my affection. For the first batch of snickerdoodles, I put the Great Jones pan head-to-head against the Nordic Ware, and it objectively outperformed my old favorite. The cookies set up better, their bottoms were browner and crispier, and their insides fluffier, and I attribute that to the heat retention that the pan’s added layer of ceramic adds. The Nordic Ware-baked cookies were good, but they were too flat, not cakey enough, and took longer to bake than their competitors.

As far as the roasted veggies were concerned, I didn’t notice much discernible difference between the Nordic Ware and the Great Jones, but there’s no denying that the colorful ceramic coating added a little panache to the dinner table. When it came time to clean up the mess in my kitchen, the Great Jones pan was the clear favorite. Every cookie baked on these pans just slid right off, without any resistance. I was able to sweep away burnt bits of broccoli and garlic into the trash with my hand. Perhaps that’s an unfair advantage — the NordicWare pan and other aluminum pans don’t proclaim to be non-stick — but I certainly appreciated that feature while doing a sinkful of dishes.