me and my cake pans

[TurtleMeng]

A homebaker's difficult situation, has been getting progressively worse:

Right now I think I have 3 (10/9/8 inch)sprinform pans, 4 mini 4-inch springform pans, cake pans 6/8/9/10 inches 2 to 3 each, pie pan, tart pans 8 and 11 inch, tartlet pans,loaf pans, mini loaf pans, square pans 8/9 inch, half sheet pan, jelly roll pans God knows how many, cooling racks at least 4, heart-shaped pan, star-shaped pan, petit four molds, 7 inch brioche molds, savarin molds big and a dozen 3-inch ones (want to try Sherry Yard's Financier in the little cuties), 2 oval pans, 2 more oval pans (carried all the way back from Taiwan, crazy), 2 cake rings, 2 bundts (because one is smaller and fancy like a castle), 2 tube pans (because the 7 inch is so adorable), 1 madeline pan, 1 shell pan, 1 french bread pan, 3 muffin pans...

(1) All my family members repeat the phrase "why did you buy another pan" when I buy another pan. OK, I won't ask for help on that one.

(2) Is there any way on this planet that these can fit in a normal kitchen? Right now they are all stowed in the little cabinet under the microwave counter. Completely disorganized. Last time my mother-in-law put my KitchenAid paddle attachment in one pan somewhere in there. My gosh. The agony in the middle of making an apple cake for boyscout meeting.

I guess this was partly griping and cathartic. But I wonder how other homebakers put away their stuff.

Edited January 23, 2005 by TurtleMeng (log)

[chiantiglace]

I wouldn't worry about it too much. Back in the day when i was first starting out and lived with my father (middleschool/highschool) and Dad's girlfriend now wife it was ridiculous. All three of us in the culinary field and all had our own things. An estimated geuss we probably accumulated about 4 grand wortth of resturaunt supplies. Just little stuff like pans. What we did is get one of those "office cabinets" the 6 footers and stored everything in there in an adjacent room. That helped out a lot, and made it pretty easy to find things without taking everything out of a stacked under counter cabinet and finding something barried in the back.

[binkyboots]

The things I use most live in the (fortunately large) warming drawer of our oven, the rest in the base of an old dresser in the corner of our kitchen.

Our kitchen is very badly designed (rented house) so that we only have two wall cupboards and one base unit, insane I tell you, in desperation we bought a plate rack and dresser to ease the situation.

[Wendy DeBord]

I have alot more then a home baker. I've definately got enough to open a small bakery. I store them interstacked on a metal rack in my basement. Although if I brought home all the stuff I have at work..........I'd need more racks.

I also have clear plastic bins where I store my cookie cutters and small stuff. I've put similar themed cookie cutters in plastic bags with-in those bins so I can easily grab them. For x-mas stuff..........they have their own bin or two.

[DiH]

Glad to hear that everyone's kitchens sound just like mine. Except my base cabinets are also the playground-of-choice for my two ferrets... music to their ears is the clattering of metal pans falling from the upper to the lower shelves.

Di

[Anni]

Oh yea, the space issue has been a big one around here lately (although no ferrets are involved ). I'm fortunate to have a spare room in the basement where I've co-opted a metro rack from my hubby and filled it with a lot of my baking-related items that I'm not using regularly. But otherwise, yep, all my lower cabinets are full of pans, cutters, ingredients, racks, etc. Plastic shoeboxes (available from Target) are good for corralling cutters, gumpaste tools, brushes, chocolate tools and other small items. Trying to find room for my ever-growing collection of B&P "stuff" is forcing me to be a good organizer!

[browniebaker]

In addition to the kitchen, which is full, my collection of pans has expanded into the boiler room in the basement and to the shower stall in the basement bathroom.

[fou de Bassan]

I have a little room in the basement just for kitchen things. 3 walls of shelves and one is for pans. If I didn't have a basement I think Metro shelving would take up a significant part of our first floor!

[JFLinLA]

Of course, there's remodeling the kitchen but that will have to wait. We've got to get kid #2 out of braces, both kids to and through college, and a myriad of other things that will all come first. But . . . sigh . . . one day . . .

A girl can dream, right?

[TurtleMeng]

Oh, this is the only time I wish I lived somewhere else than LA. Everyone seems to have a BASEMENT. (I guess there are houses with them in LA, but I yet have to find one). It would be soooooo cool, figuratively and literally.

[chiantiglace]

there are no basements where i live (chronic flooding). Infact every house is one floor up on stilts. Even if we had a basement, sand shifts so often that in about 4 years it might be a first floor.

[andiesenji]

I don't have a basement but I do have a rather large pantry.

For all those odd-shaped Bundt pans in my collection, I put them into the jumbo freezer(2.5 gallon), Hefty bags (bright pink box, best price at Wal-Mart. They have a slide top and are very sturdy. I punch a hole in one corner near the top, below the seal and hang them on hooks, either at one end of one of the shelving units or on the wall. The ones I use seasonally (Christmas) I put up near the ceiling. The others are lower. All of my silicone pans are also in these bags, as well as some of the smaller sheet pans and shaped pans (popover pans, fancy muffin tins, etc.) This way they not only are easy to store, they remain dust-free, something not always easy to achieve in the desert. (I live in Lancaster).

With any of the tinned steel ones (I have a lot of really old bakeware) one has to be absolutely certain they are totally dry before being put away in the bags and I have a bunch of the little bags of stuff that absorbs moisture to go in with the ones subject to rusting.

The jumbo Hefty freezer bags are even strong enough to hold some of my smaller cast iron pans.

[jgm]

I had a space between the deep freeze and the wall that wasn't doing anything productive, so I bought a plastic 4-drawer unit from an office supply store. It's about 4 feet high, and I'd say each drawer is about 10 inches deep. It's been a godsend. It holds various baking 'stuff' close enough to the kitchen that it's not a pain to retrieve and put away. I also have some boxes I bought from Tupperware a few years ago (but you could use shoe or sweater boxes from a discount store) and one houses Kitchen Aid attachments, another food processor attachments, etc. Separating the things I use all the time from the things I use only occasionally has definitely been the answer in my kitchen. And I do not allow ANYONE but me to unload my dishwasher or put kitchen equipment away. My dear husband, bless his heart, genuinely tries to get things back where they belong, but if he doesn't it can cause a real crisis!

[andiesenji]

My housekeeper likes to put EVERYTHING away, even the things I use constantly and prefer to leave out on the counter. I certainly have plenty of space, but she likes a pristine, empty counter and even after many months, although she is getting better, I occasionally have to ask the location of something because when she goes into cleaning mode, it is easier to stay out of her way and retrieve the errant item later.

[TurtleMeng]

I think I will take a trip to officemax and homedepot, to get inspired.

All these ideas motivated me into action at least. I cleaned out some cabinet in the family room--medical journals from 1999? Symposium notes from 2000? I was asleep during the conference anyways. All the less-used stuff went in there for now. I am quite proud.

It is so funny. This inner pot from the rice cooker doesn't belong to my baking stuff and I constantly put in in the normal-kitchen-stuff area; the next thing I know it is back to my cabinet space. I think the saying that 2 women do not share peace in the kitchen (something along that line) is a little true. I buy a lot of eggs in preparation of baking, next thing I know my mother-in-law is making huge portions of scramble egg to feed everyone.

[jgarner53]

My stuff is spread all over the kitchen. Tart pans and smaller cake pans are above the fridge. Muffin tins and baking sheets in the cupboard near the stove. Bundt pan, banneton, angel food and springform pan (unused lo these many years) in the wasteland corner cupboard (thank the gods I can access it from two sides). A few months ago I cleaned out a shelving unit in the garage, moved things around, and put my less-often used stuff in big plastic bins from Target out there: more cake pans, cookie cutters and decorating tools (like food coloring and sugars), my turntable, ramekins, mousse rings, etc.

I like the bins from Target because they're cheap, come in multiple sizes, and you can get translucent ones. I label them with masking tape and a Sharpie, but it's still nice to know the general contents of something.

[Wendy DeBord]

I.  I buy a lot of eggs in preparation of baking, next thing I know my mother-in-law is making huge portions of scramble egg to feed everyone.

I love it, how funny!

JGM, don't ever work in a professional kitchen it will put you in the insane asylum. You can't begin to realize how we struggle finding equipment and parts from multiple dish washers (people, not machines). Every now and then someone goes nuts screaming about something thats missing, it's amazing how worked up it can get you.

[kthull]

I'm in the same boat. Stuff all over the kitchen, now creeping into the bedroom. The garage is too spidery for me to use and we only have a half basement that we recently finished for the kids to use as a rec room (though my cake boards are in one of the trundle bed drawers). We've decided to retire our cute little bakers rack and have a nice 5-shelf steel rack on the way. Won't look as nice, but it'll hold a heck of a lot more. Oh yeah, cookbooks and mags in the office, kitchen and basement.

And with me venturing into the personal chef world, I've been adding (and will continue to add) even more.

[chiantiglace]

Oh Wendy, please don't bring dishwashers up. I could go on for days about that, well probably forever because every day it seems I am going through a new hassle of finding things. I've lost it sometimes. I know that the dishwashers just want to do a good job so they'll clean up areas you didn't want them to but lord it's frustrating. I can't stand looking for two things that belong together that are on seperate parts of the kitchen because the dishwasher didn't so the "attatchment" to each other and each piece looks like something else. What is reall frustrating is a new dishwasher, especially if it's one that can't comminucate with the rest. The whole first week will be scavenger hunt week.

Ohwell, what can you do besides wash every little thing by yourself and keep alarms on them.

[kjente2]

I put a five shelf 2 door cabinet in the garage. It's about 7 feet tall and 3 1/2 feet wide. Then got vertical organizers from the container store. Cake pans are nested and rest vertically. Muffin Pans are on their own unless they are the same size. Loaf pans, nested, and so on. Gadgets that I don't use every day, like the meat grinder and pasta maker are stored there as well.