However, there are a few differences between the two, which you’ll need to consider when using a pie pan for baking a tart. Many people often think of pie pans as the same thing as tart pans, as they’re quite similar. Factors to Consider When Using Pie Pans as a Tart Pan Substitute Pie PansĪlso called pie tins, pie dishes, and pie plates, pie pans make an excellent tart pan substitute. You can easily account for the height difference by adjusting how high you take your pastry crust. Therefore, besides a smaller and perhaps taller tart, there will be no other difference in a tart baked in a quiche pan. Other than that, they’re usually made of metal and have fluted rims and a quick lift-out bottom. The only difference between quiche pans and the tart pan is that a quiche pan tends to be smaller in diameter and slightly deeper. Factors to Consider When Using Quiche Pans as a Tart Pan Substituteīesides a few-dimensional variance, they’re essentially the same kind of pan. Now, just because you don’t have one at home doesn’t mean you have to kill your cravings and deprive yourself of the divine item.Īll you have to do is choose one of the following tart pan substitutes.Īs far as tart pan substitutes go, quiche pans are your best bet.

Tarts pans are known for giving your tarts those clean, sharp edges and a professional-looking pastry. What Are Some Easy and Effective Tart Pan Substitutes? What Are Some Easy and Effective Tart Pan Substitutes?.The wavy edges on a tart pan’s rim, called flutes, give the finished tart its professional, polished appearance. The sticky finish on the aluminum pan, which had been a small asset when rolling out the dough, made removing the tart from the base a little harder than it had to be (although it still released adequately). Here the nonstick coating on three of the pans helped reduce the potential for tart breakage. Though removable sides make removing a tart from the pan easier, the final shimmy of the tart off the disk bottom and onto the serving plate takes some finesse. This makes sense because darker pans hold heat better. For even, golden browning on both savory and sweet crusts, pans with dark nonstick coatings outperformed the shiny, lighter finishes of the traditional-finish pans. A good tart pan should give you golden, even browning-any dark-brown or too-pale spots mar presentation as well as texture and flavor. Not only were the nonstick pans not a problem, but there were several areas-browning and release-where they performed better than traditional-finish pans. But in the end, none of the pans presented problems for rolling or pressing dough into the fluted grooves. The traditional-finish pans had a tacky surface that was a bit easier to use, really holding on to the dough as we pressed it in place. We ended up with three nonstick steel pans and two traditional-finish pans (one made of tinned steel and one aluminum).Īs we rolled pastry dough into the pans, we were in for a surprise: Whether the pans were nonstick or not, they were all equally fine to work with, and the doughs more or less stayed put and didn’t slump. But with formulas for nonstick coatings always changing, we decided to reconsider nonstick tart pans to see if new models would perform better than their older cousins. As for nonstick tart pans, our past tests showed that their slick surfaces were a slight disadvantage when pressing dough into the crevices of the pan because the dough slumped down and didn’t adhere as well. Pans with removable bottoms allow the baker to remove the rim before sliding the tart off the disk base and onto a serving plate. We considered only pans with removable bottoms-and if you’ve ever tried chiseling a delicate tart out of a solid pan, you understand why.

But does it matter which tart pan you buy? To find out, we made a savory tomato tart with a pat-in-the-pan crust and a classic lemon tart with a pâte sucrée (traditional French sweet pastry) using five different models priced from about $9.00 to $27.00. Shallow, fluted tart pans can give a home baker’s quiche or fruit tart a professional look.

Fluted tart pan with removable bottom