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Baking 101: Which Rolling Pin Is Best?

December 11, 2015 by Joy the Baker 78 Comments

Which Rolling Pin Is Best?

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.)

Bourbon Pear Crumble Pie

Salty Honey Pie

Brown Butter Chess Pie

Traditional Rolling Pin

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.  

French Rolling Pin

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.  

Laser Cut 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.  

Laser Cut Rolling Pins.

Vintage Rolling Pin

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 Pin

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? 

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  1. August

    September 24, 2016 at 11:07 am

    I have three rolling pins. the first is a traditional American rolling pin with the two handles. My wife loves it. Me, not so much. I have a wooden French pin that I really like. It is versatile, but my wife hates it and will not use it. I also have a marble pin. Oh my! A joy to work with for the right thing. It is not for everything. . My wife says we have to get rid of one of them and has the marble one in a bag to give away. I am said, but she won’t use it, I have my French pin, and she has her traditional pin. What I don’t like about the traditional pin is that it gets rusty at the spindle and cannot be kept clean and sanitary. So, stick with the French I will and she will use her traditional pin, probably passed down from her mother.

    Reply
  2. Shinta

    September 11, 2016 at 1:58 am

    I’m thinking of making my own traditional rolling pins right now, with 20 inches of lenght. Should be wonderfull ????

    Reply
  3. Elizabeth

    August 13, 2016 at 7:48 pm

    Thank you so much. Your advice has given me the exact information I need. I will be subscribing to your blog. :)

    Reply
  4. Cheryl Jones

    June 6, 2016 at 7:19 am

    I had to make fifty (yes 5-0) gingerbread houses for a friendship group last year. Big batches of dough that needed to be rolled to a specific thickness. The engineer in me woke up and headed down to the local hardware shop, bought 2 pieces of wood 10mm x 5mm x70cm. and a thick round dowel 70 cm long. I put the 2 flat pieces on the left and right and rolled the dough between them with the dowel. It worked like a dream – 50 gingerbread houses with the thicknesses all the same! And 50 happy ladies :)

    Reply
  5. Bee Gianni

    May 7, 2016 at 3:55 pm

    Your Baking 101 tutorials are so very informative and helpful. I hope you plan on offering more tips and tricks. Thank you.

    Reply
  6. ulla

    March 21, 2016 at 4:05 pm

    I have a confession to make. While I bake a lot, I actually don’t own a rolling pin. That just… happened.
    For a few years now, I’ve been using a bottle of white wine of questionable origin and even more questionable content. I’ll never know. It turned out to be perfect: all smooth, heavy, easy to rinse, and very controllable (is that a word?).
    So, no dedicated rolling pin for me. (Wrong! I’d never dream of using a different pin, err, bottle!)

    Reply
    • joythebaker

      May 24, 2016 at 12:35 pm

      I love it, way to get creative!

      Reply
  7. frabjus

    March 20, 2016 at 10:34 pm

    I use a Maple French Style Rolling Pin my husband Hand-Turned on his lathe. I love all the ribbon grains in the wood.

    We also started selling them recently in our store Lady and the Carpenter. Looking for a few bloggers interested in trying one out and publishing a review. You interested?

    Reply
  8. Tu Doan

    February 27, 2016 at 1:27 pm

    Hi there, I’m really interested in baking. Recently, I’m going to a school for that. Now, I’m looking for a rolling pin for working with the dough. Could you please tell me where could I buy a French rolling pin? I live in Toronto,Canada. Thank you and look forward your answer. :)

    Reply
  9. arundati

    February 10, 2016 at 10:30 pm

    if you’re ever in India, you should check out the range we have…. each region produces their own unique kind, some ridged, decorative, fat, thin, heavy and light, you would love it!

    Reply
  10. Kerry

    January 1, 2016 at 10:17 pm

    I have both a marble and a wood rolling pin. But the one I love the most is a metal and plastic one that my daughters received in a cooking kit. Often, after fighting with a hunk of dough, I will fish it out of their play kitchen, wash it up, and get the job done. It’s the right weight, keeps the temp cool without chilling, and very maneuverable.

    Reply
  11. Brett

    December 15, 2015 at 3:19 pm

    What are your thoughts on the “beer bottle roller”? Small, compact, versatile, can be chilled, oh! and the best part, you can drink the contents when done!

    Reply
  12. Cy

    December 13, 2015 at 12:00 pm

    My sister bought me a wooden one years ago for a gift and I love it. It’s actually even, not tapered at all and I find that it’s easy to get an even result. I remember my moms old metal one with the handles, seems like the dough would stick to it more easily, but I wasn’t really savvy to all the tricks of baking then. I could have chilled it in the fridge. It was pink and was well loved and used. I don’t know what happened to it, they don’t seem to make the metal ones anymore. Thanks for the tutorial, very informative!

    Reply
  13. Cy

    December 13, 2015 at 11:45 am

    I love your Sunday posts! I just want to say I have new found empathy for my postal carrier , whom I speak to often. She kind of talks my ear off and I have to rush by her when I’m on my way somewhere otherwise I won’t be on time, but she has helped me often. I hope to god your parents never experienced what the author of that article has! There always seems to be this assumption, that the money and benefits are pretty good. Plus we always hear how government workers get away with so many extras. Anyway eye opening! Still making my way through the rest of the post.

    Reply
  14. Karen

    December 13, 2015 at 3:01 am

    i got a beautiful rolling pin as a very thoughtful Christmas present a few years ago from Anthropologie. I think it’s stoneware. I love how pretty it is and swear it works better than my old wood rolling pin. It makes me happy every time I use it. I find myself rolling out dough with my hands on the pin, rather than the handles, more often than not. Maybe I should give the French rolling pin a go.

    Reply
  15. Chrissy

    December 12, 2015 at 11:14 pm

    I have a traditional and a French/vintage. My grandmother’s French style rolling pin is about 3 feet long, and I keep it next to my bed as my night weapon. I live in Chicago, night weapons are a thing and a rolling pin provides the WTH is that surprise factor.

    Reply
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