We’ve always believed the best kitchen tools earn their place by being useful. They should work hard, look good doing it, and ideally become the things you reach for without thinking twice.
That was the thinking behind our new Essential Bakeware collection. We wanted to make pieces that could handle the practical business of baking (brownies, pies, dinner rolls, all the classics) while still feeling like us. In other words: bakeware you’d be happy to pull straight from the oven and put on the table, too.
Start With the Good Stuff
As with everything in our Essential Collection, utility came first. We wanted these pieces to perform beautifully and stand up to everyday use, but we also saw an opportunity to bring a little more personality to a category that tends to skew heavily toward white and glass.
The result is bakeware made from a custom stoneware blend developed specifically for repeated oven use. While our dinnerware is oven safe, this clay body is formulated with bakeware in mind, improving heat retention and durability for use up to 450°F.
We also chose a thicker ceramic construction than you’ll find on many larger-brand pieces. That extra heft helps the dishes heat evenly, which is good news for anything where texture matters. Think properly browned edges, evenly baked centers, and, perhaps most importantly, pies with crisp bottoms instead of soggy ones.
A small thing, until you’re the person who spent all afternoon making the pie.
Form Meets Function
We wanted the bakeware to look good, but we were never interested in choosing looks over performance.
Take the finish. The outside has the matte glaze we love, while the interior is finished with a shiny glaze. The contrast is subtle, but intentional: the interior is more resistant to scratching from everyday use, while the exterior keeps the soft, understated look of the Essential Collection.
It’s a good example of how we approach design in general. If a detail can do two jobs, even better.
There are also two raised ridges on the base of every piece, running around the entire bottom of the pan. They’re easy to overlook, which is sort of the point. The ridges create space for air to circulate underneath the dish, helping it cool more quickly without the need for a separate cooling rack.
A Little More Room
Generosity is one of our brand values, and we found a fairly literal way to bring it to the bakeware.
Our 8 x 8 and 9 x 13 dishes are deeper than many standard baking dishes, giving you a little more room to work with. More brownie for the crowd. More layers in the lasagna. More flexibility when you’re cooking without following a recipe down to the last centimeter. We like a kitchen tool that gives you options.
More Than a Baking Dish
We started with baking classics in mind: brownies in the 9 x 13, dinner rolls in the 8 x 8, and pies in the round dish. Then we started using them.
Turns out, they’re just as good at savory cooking. Shakshuka, roasted vegetables, enchiladas. We’ve been putting our samples to the test and finding plenty of reasons to keep them in rotation.
That versatility was always part of the idea. These are baking dishes, yes, but they’re also serving pieces, which means there’s no need to transfer dinner to something else once it comes out of the oven. One dish, from oven to table. Fewer dishes in the sink. We’ll take it.
Made to Be Used
Longevity is something we think about with every addition to the Hawkins collection, and stoneware is particularly well suited to the job.
It’s one of the most durable and user-friendly clay bodies available, and the thicker construction of these pieces helps reduce the stress that can come from temperature changes. That makes them well suited to repeated use, which is exactly what we had in mind.
Of course, even the hardiest bakeware has its limits: we still don’t recommend taking a frozen ceramic dish directly into a hot oven. Some things are better learned from us than from experience.
We Couldn’t Pick Just a Few
There was one part of the process that proved surprisingly difficult: choosing the colors.
We initially planned to launch the bakeware in a smaller selection of Essential Collection colors while we introduced the category. A sensible plan. A restrained plan.
Then we tried to pick our favorites. Turn out, we couldn’t. So instead, the collection launched in all eight Essential colors. Because if you’re going to make something that lives on your counter, comes straight from the oven to the table, and gets used often, you might as well have options.
The Details Add Up
A good baking dish doesn’t need to reinvent baking. It just needs to do the fundamentals exceptionally well. For us, that meant choosing the right stoneware blend. Giving the pieces enough thickness to heat evenly. Making the interiors more resistant to scratches. Adding room where it’s useful. Designing details that improve performance without calling attention to themselves.
The result is bakeware designed to be used often, served from proudly, and kept around for a long time. Because the things we use every day deserve just as much thought as the things we save for special occasions. Especially when those occasions involve brownies.
