---
slug: do_you_need_a_cooling_rack
category_path: home_kitchen/kitchen_dining/bakeware/cooling_racks
title: "Do You Need a Cooling Rack?"
lead: "If you bake even monthly, yes — cookies and cakes cooling on a solid surface steam their own bottoms soggy, and the rack is the fix. Buy an uncoated stainless grid and it moonlights in the oven as a roasting rack."
recommendation:
  name: "An uncoated stainless wire rack that fits inside your baking sheet"
  reason: "Cooling is where a bake finishes: hot cookies and sponges keep releasing steam, and on a plate or board that steam condenses right back into the bottom crust — the rack's open grid lets it leave, which is the entire product. Buying it in your baking sheet's inner dimension doubles its jobs: set inside the sheet it becomes an oven-safe roasting and glazing rack, bacon crisper, and tempura drainer. Uncoated stainless is the material requirement for that oven double-life — nonstick-coated racks are cooling-only and shed their coating if roasted. The substitutes are honest but worse: the toaster-oven rack works for one cookie batch, and chopstick-propped plates are a wobble with a countdown."
published: 2026-07-07
updated: 2026-07-07
---


<ComparisonTable
  columns={["Type", "Build", "Best for", "Downside"]}
  rows={[
    ["Uncoated stainless grid", "Tight crosshatch, oven-safe", "Cooling plus in-oven roasting — the buy", "Crosshatch wants a brush to clean"],
    ["Nonstick-coated rack", "Easy wipe-down", "Cooling only, sticky glazes", "Coating bars it from the oven"],
    ["Footed round rack (cake cooler)", "Classic pâtisserie shape", "Whole cakes and bread loaves", "Round wastes sheet-pan real estate"],
    ["Toaster-oven rack substitute", "Free, already owned", "A single cookie batch", "Tiny, and the toaster wants it back"],
  ]}
/>