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Can a silpat be trimmed to fit your pan?

10 years ago

I've googled this and am seeing answers of YES and NO. Have you ever trimmed one down to fit your pan and was it successful? I'm wondering if the No answers are stemming from the "do not cut on the silpat" instructions, which is to say "it's not a cutting board"!

Featured Answer

grainlady_ks

10 years ago

NO! Cutting it will destroy the woven texture and it will fall apart. Plus you risk getting bits of the mat in your baked goods.

When I "cut" dough on a Silpat I use a stiff plastic tool (like a bowl scraper, spatula, plastic lettuce knife, plastic bar-cookie cutting knife....) that won't damage or cut the mat. To "cut" cinnamon rolls I use dental floss, and I form the dough log on the Silpat.

The mats come in a variety of sizes, so I have a number of them, and I have a variety of pans to hold them for different tasks. I love my 10", eight-sided, Silpat for forming small amounts of dough and scones on.

A "World Cuisine" silicon mat is actually a little thicker than a Silpat, and my first choice when making peanut brittle. The hot molten sugar/nut mixture won't stick to a silicon mat and it's easy to remove when cool.

I line a rimmed cookie sheet with one when I bake meatballs. Clean-up is a breeze.

-Grainlady

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Comments (7)

User
10 years ago
I would never cut it. Get a bigger pan.
arkansas girl thanked User
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plllog
10 years ago
Absolutely to what Grainlady said. There are also silicone mats, however, that don't have the fiberglass mesh in them. They're just silicone. The surface feel is different--I don't know if there's a performance difference--but those can be trimmed. It's the fiberglass mesh that prevents you from doing it with the Silpat and similar. The no cutting on it is a different but related story. Yes, it's so you don't cut down to the mesh and get fiberglass in your food, but it's also because you'll cut the silicone (which doesn't heal, though it may look as if it does) and both trap particles with bacteria and decay, and also interfere with the non-stick-ness.
arkansas girl thanked plllog
arkansas girl
Original Author
10 years ago
Sounds pretty unanimous then. I personally just use parchment paper, I was asking for a friend, it had come up in conversation today. It's amazing what different answers you can get while reading chowhound and other forums. People went so far as to say that America's Test Kitchen said they could see no reason why not and thought the idea that you could not cut them to size was preposterous. Quoted from memory only...probably went a bit differently but was basically what they said. It makes sense if they have the fibers that would mess them up to cut the fibers.

Couldn't the mat hang over the side of a flat cookie sheet, assuming it's not way larger than the pan?
User
10 years ago
It can hang over. You just don't want to crease the mat.
PRO
Lars/J. Robert Scott
10 years ago
Silpat comes in a variety of sizes. Get the size that fits your pan, but do not cut the Silpat, for reasons already explained.
plllog
10 years ago
Maybe ATK were looking at the ones that don't have the mesh?

So long as it doesn't prevent airflow from being all the way to the walls of the oven, there's no reason the Silpat couldn't overhang the edges of a sheet at cookie temperatures. If you're pushing the useable temperature (well over 400° F), the racks could just possibly get too hot. Probably wouldn't but just possibly.

Most parchment is coated with silicone, so really much the same thing. :) (If it's not silicone, it's nearly always latex. That would the be the "plant based" ones.)

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