I can be a bit of a nag in the kitchen.
I don’t generally care how fancy your butter is, which set of copper measuring cups you use, or if your oven is gas or electric or hamster-wheel-powered. If you’ve been around here for even just a few days, you know that I’m a stickler, a nag, a nuisance, a pest, a finger-wagger about making your own pie crust.
Proof: Five Tips For the Best All-Butter Pie Crust From Scratch
Pie crust requires patience, guts, practice, flour, butter, buttermilk, and a rolling pin. But wait… why are there so many different kinds of rolling pins? Different strokes for different folks. (Is that rolling pin humor?) Let’s discuss the differences. The right rolling pin and you’ll be on your way to pie crust success.
Did someone say pie!? (yes. me. a lot.)
Perhaps this is the most familiar rolling pin to you, the American or ‘baker’s’ rolling pin. A wooden, in this case Maple, center dowel that turns in the center of two handles. You can comfortably curl your fingers around each of the handles, using leverage and arm strength to push the rolling pin forward and back over dough.
Pro: comfortable handles. Great for everything from cookies, biscuits, pizza, and pie.
Con: I’ve found that these rolling pins can be a bit heavy and are slightly less maneuverable that other, handleless options.
Overall, I love this style of rolling pin. It’s comfortable, versatile, classic. If you only have one rolling pin in your kitchen (because you’re a reasonable person), this Maple Rolling Pin is great. Not too large or heavy, making it wonderful for pie crust and other rolling needs.
You may have run across a Tapered or French-style rolling pins and thought… nope, too fancy for me. I did. I was wrong.
French Rolling Pins don’t have handles, so you won’t be grasping at the sides of the rolling pin to push and pull. Instead, you use the heel of your hand to press a French Rolling Pin away from you. Since you aren’t grasping the outside handles, you naturally place your hands, more towards the center of the rolling pin, applying pressing and pressing the dough with more control and intimacy than a rolling pin with handles.
Pro: maneuverability, controlled pressure, more control in general, lightweight.
Con: great for soft bread doughs and pie doughs… not good for a stiff or chilled cookie dough.
Overall, this is a wonderful rolling pin to have.They’re beautiful, simple, and really easy to work with.
Mahogany French Rolling Pin or Food52’s beautiful Tapered Wooden Rolling Pins.
Let’s talk about show-off rolling pins. These are them.
These, personalized laser-cut rolling pins (they totally say Joy the Baker) are for two specific purposes. One: making awesome custom sugar cookies and Two: as decoration on my kitchen shelf.
This is not your pie crust rolling pin. It’s just not.
Maybe it’s your grandmother’s rolling pin. Maybe it’s a great find from that awesome vintage shop you found in Nashville. Either way, a vintage rolling pin is lovely to have… especially if you’re a food stylist who collects various dilapidated wood props.
Did people have smaller hands in the 1940’s? I’m thinking yes. Vintage rolling pins are often smaller than modern rolling pins. This one in particular feels like something between a traditional and a tapered rolling pin.
Pros: way good vibes, and often smaller in size making them great for single pie crusts and food photographs.
Cons: sometimes they’re too small and questionably splintery. These things are hard to ignore, but they’re still lovely to have in the kitchen.
Marble rolling pins are for the aesthetically aware and the laminated dough enthusiasts. These rolling pins are rather heavy in weight but it can be chilled before rolling, making it a great tool for cool-sensitive doughs like puff pastry.
Pro: will hold a chill for the two times you might make puff pastry a year. Two!? Weight of the rolling pin can work for you… less arm pressure. Oh so pretty.
Con: can be heavy and tedious to maneuver, but it’s hard to be mad at a piece of pretty marble.
Overall, a splurge.
To clean a rolling pin, here’s a trick: use a soft bench scraper to scrape any flour and dough bits off the pin then use a clean, damp cloth to wipe the rolling pin. No submerging in water. Don’t even think about the dishwasher.
Update: I love reading your comments below about your favorite, feel-good rolling pins! Tell me tell me! What’s in your kitchen?
Emily Crittenden
I have a 50’s Folley rolling pin and my great grandmas rolling pin :)
Nikki
What about metal pins?
Nicole Vargas
Hi!!
What about the new rolling pins that have rings to control the dough. They have rings that allow you to make the perfect thickness to pie, cookies and fondant and it comes in a variety of colors. I have a Joseph Joseph wooden rolling pin and love it! Because sometime when I’m in a rush I made it too thin or too thick.
Thank you!! Love you article
Allysa
any thoughts on the rolling pin wrapped in silicone? My mom bought me one and, to be frank, I sort of hate it. I feel like things stick to it more than the traditional rolling pin.
Katie
Found a hollow plastic one where the end of one handle screwed off to allow you to fill it with ice cubes and water for a chilled pin. 20¢ from the thrift shop! It did the job for a poor student baker :)
DucksoupSD
I have my mom’s aluminum roller that also unscrews at one end for a cold (or hot?) roller. I’m tracking down an o-ring (#131) so it can seal again.
Considering The Radish
I tried a french rolling pin for the first time last year, and I now own two. It feels like a more intuitive way to roll dough. Although I must say, that marble one is a stunner.
joythebaker
I feel like they’re very intuitive as well!
Pat Smith
Oh, forgot to say that my ’50s RP has ball bearings so it spins like mad — very effective entertainment for young nieces and nephews! And me!
Thanks for reading!
Pat
Christine
Hey Pat that sounds like an awesome rolling pin!!!
Ann Uphill
My most prized possession is my marble rolling pin left to me by my grandfather. It makes my heart happy just to hold it and when I use it I miss him less.
joythebaker
I understand completely!
findingmykd
I just inherited my grandmother’s marble rolling pin this year, and making an apple pie for Christmas like we used to do together was exactly what I needed.
Pat Smith
Hello . Happy New Year! I am not a baker, but subscribe to king arthur’s newsletter for their chocolate and for a friend who is a master baker… Linked over to your website, interested in your rolling pin discourse. Interesting indeed! Enjoyed the discussion. I have used a rolling pin maybe 7 times in my lifetime. Once every ten years or so… My rolling pin? To the absolute horror of my baker friends who visit and for some reason NEED a rolling pin, is my precious pink rubber (no stick, anyway) RP with turquoise handles that my Mom gave me when I THOUGHT I was a budding baker. You know how everyone brags about their grandmother’s and mother’s pie crust or cakes? Not me. Sorry, Charlie. My mother used a rolling pin, say, twice that I remember. Maybe I am selling her short, but she was very good at going to the Swiss and Dutch bakers we had in our little town to get things they baked remarkably well.!! Both my grandmothers had full-time cooks and were never in their kitchens except to plan menus! I try. I really try to be baker, but pity those who have to eat my baked goods, except for my great brownies and chocolate chip cookies for which no one needs a rolling pin. As I am into more form than function, my beacon of the ’50s RP has served me well and just amaze my young nieces who covet it. Guess what? One of them will get it someday! Thanks for the gift ideas. But will my dear baker friends really want a personalized laser RP? Time will tell.
Signed, “No flour on my fingers!”
Pat Smith
Sacramento, California
spiffycookie
My dad has a “vintage” rolling pin that my uncle made for him years ago. He is supposed to be making me one soon, which would be great since mine just broke! Which reminds me, you forgot one: the silicone rolling pins! That’s what I had and I thought it was a solid cylinder until I broke the dang thing. It was light and easy to use.
joythebaker
You’re right the silicone rolling pin. They don’t feel very intuitive to me so I’ve never worked with one.
Bonnie Arnold
My dad made my rolling pin for me! It’s like the French without the tapering. I love it! It’s the best for pie crust. Super maneuverable and the right amount of weight. Made out of Ash. Right before Thanksgiving I rolled out six crusts no problem!
Melissa Berry
It’s funny, people don’t really think of kitchen tools as actual tools for specific jobs, but that’s exactly what they are. And then they wonder why they fail when they try and roll a pie crust out with a fondant roller. Haha. (Totally speaking from experience, there.) I have been a bit intimidated by French pins, but I think you’ve convinced me to give one a shot…and now I’m sure I need a marble pin for my first attempt at puff pastry!
Kate
my rolling pin is an old wine bottle. mostly because it was what was handy the first time I needed one. is glass a terrible medium to use?
joythebaker
i respect it!
ethnopopgirl
What about the synthetic materials rolling pin? I have one – got it because (like marble) I can chill it or freeze it but without the weight. I often have mixed feelings, though.
Ashlyn @ The Pedantic Foodie
What a great post! I loved reading all your tips, Joy! I’ve got a marble rolling pin on my Christmas list this year!
thecraftymann
I have a marble pin that my Mom and I found at a thrift store for $3, and I LOVE it. I guess maybe I should get a wooden one since I do love baking my pie crusts from scratch! I hadn’t even thought about that since my marble pin seems to do fine and I still get pretty flaky crusts.
joythebaker
definitely go with what feels good to you! you’re doing everything right!
Judy
can’t copy this article and some of your recipes like I used to
Famidha
Mine falls under the vintage one! which I was thinking is the traditional.. Time to go for shopping I guess! :-P
jo
Apparently there is a “round” rolling pin for rolling chapati, roti and the like. At least that’s what my husband tells me! I scrolled through your post looking for one….maybe they don’t exist and the joke is on me!
MZ
I’ve always seen roti and chapatis rolled with the vintage or traditional pin by my mother and in other households.
wot
The rolling pin isn’t round but the board you use the rolling pin on is like a round little stool. You can find on Amazon.