Help needed with baking instructions

[Katie Meadow]

Here are instructions in Dorie's recipe for Poppy Seed Cake from Sunday's NYT magazine: after buttering and flouring a loaf pan you are to "place the pan on two stacked baking sheets or an insulated baking sheet." W hat is an insulated baking sheet? Is the idea here to add extra heat to the bottom of the pan? What else can be subbed for 2 stacked baking sheets? Thanks for the help! I've never had a recipe specify such a thing for what appears to be a rather simple quick tea loaf.

[blue_dolphin]

Insulated baking sheets are usually used to minimize bottom browning of cookies or other baked goods and I’d guess she’s recommending it for the same reason here. 
 

[Alex]

25 minutes ago, blue_dolphin said:

Insulated baking sheets are usually used to minimize bottom browning of cookies or other baked goods and I’d guess she’s recommending it for the same reason here. 
 

 

Agreed. I have an insulated cookie sheet, which also is called a baking sheet, I guess -- one like this (eG-friendly Amazon.com link), but not Nordic Ware.

[heidih]

Makes sense. The Solo poppyseed cake I used to make would get easily bottom brown. 

[Anna N]

1 hour ago, Katie Meadow said:

What else can be subbed for 2 stacked baking sheets?

One solution might be to wrap a stack of paper towels in foil and put that between the loaf pan and the baking sheet. That should serve as insulation. 

Edited January 11, 2022 by Anna N
Typo (log)

[Margaret Pilgrim]

Or invert a rimmed baking sheet on a larger one or a non-rimmed sheet.

[heidih]

Or just bake as you would for similar goodies

[Katie Meadow]

What would I do without eG? I inverted one cookie sheet inside of a slightly larger one. Cake came out easily and is not overly brown on the bottom. Thank you! As you probably know from my lack of posts in the baking threads I am really not much of a baker, but since the lockdown of two years ago I have been craving cake. My husband and I have developed what seems to a peculiar schedule. We eat breakfast late and make our main meal "linner," which can happen any time between 3 and 5pm. Then in the evening we snack on something. Could be popcorn, but if we plan ahead, more likely it's a simple cake of some kind. And of course there are no rules! If there is cake cooling on a rack.....

[paulraphael]

2 stacked sheet pans work great. I have some insulated sheets, but the stacked pans work equally well.

 

I mostly just use the insulated sheets as baking peels ... they're pretty rigid and don't have rims, so things slide off of them easily.