Originally published at: DIY: Dad cleans filthy baking tray
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I like my baking trays to have a patina of age.
That’s my excuse, anyway.
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Money says the act of scrubbing with the blue scrubbie and steel wool did the bulk of the work.
And personally, if I’m going to scrub the snot out of a metal backing sheet, I’m going to hit it with hot water, actual dishwashing soap, and the green scrubbies for maximum effect. (I have no idea if a mirror finish is useful or even desired in bakeware; I use parchement paper when I bake, so it’s irrelevant in my case. 
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I agree about the steel wool doing most of the work. It could also be the equivalent of hard scrubbing a properly seasoned cast iron pan.
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As a kid I remember scrubbing a cookie sheet until it was shiny. Then food tasted vaguely like metal until a new patina formed. Since then, I haven’t cared about the finish. Most cookie sheets get distorted from being thin, heat cold cycles, and other use. Having a flat cookie sheet is way more important to me than how shiny it is.
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why would someone remove all the carefully built-up non-stick seasoning on their pan like this? does he scrub his cast iron like this, too? it’s insanity.
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Um, no.
Parchment paper.
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Absolutely, in fact, the scrubbing did all the work. Chem Thug, one of my favorite Tiktok folks, has a video on this cleaning “hack”: While it might seem like baking soda and vinegar are best buddies, whe… | Cleaning Tiktok | TikTok
Vinegar + baking soda yields… water! And carbon dioxide, and a bit of salt. It’s just fizzy water and salt. It looks fun, and makes people feel better about their scrubbing, but is doing almost nothing.
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Like it’s already been said; parchment paper, for the win.
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I’m with the parchment crowd. I’ve never understood the affinity for baking soda. It doesn’t seem to cleaning anything very well and it certainly doesn’t remove odors. It’s for baking!
Besides, oven cleaning spray works way better if you ever decide to clean a baking sheet.
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Yeah, as others have said above, there is no reason to do this as it removes the polymerized oils that make it less “sticky”, but baking soda and vinegar does nothing. If you really want to accomplish this in an effective way with a pan or something that actually needs stains removed (eg crusty buildup inhibiting even heat distribution), oxalic acid does what people think soda/vinegar does. Wet the surface and shake Barkeeper’s Friend on to form a paste and let it sit for a few hours. And wear gloves.
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No kidding? We’ve got a pot of those dying in the living room! (not really, they kind of wither back every autumn up here)
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Yeah, oxalis triangolaris (or sth similar) you can eat the leaves, quite nice in a salad, just go easy, as it’s quite potent (and poisonous in large quantities)
Ours are pretty withered too, they’re bulbs, so you’ll need to repot them occasionally, as they’ll have doubled in number and exhausted the current soil. I started with 1 pot, now I have 3.
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I don’t use it for scrubbing or as a “direct” cleaner, but I will use it to help sludgy leftover pan grease to form a solidify into a denser thin paste that’s much easier to scoop out. (This is assuming I can’t reclaim the grease for cooking, of course!)
Baking soda + just enough water to turn it into a paste is great for removing cooked-on grease when scrubbed with a dishcloth. It works especially well for non-stick surfaces that you don’t want to use a more abrasive scrubber pad on.
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Sandblasting.
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