Yahoo Lifestyle 
TikToker's 'brilliant' and 'mind boggling' baking paper hack divides online: ‘I won’t do it again'
The comments of the viral video show a variety of alternatives.
Bakers, rejoice! If you’re partial to cake making (or bread, or brownies), you’re probably familiar with the struggle of fitting a pesky, rolled up sheet of baking paper into an oven tray. It doesn’t sit right, the sides of the pan aren’t lined correctly, and more often than not, excess corners can wind up burning in the oven.
Well, struggle no more. TikToker Claire Gornall, known by her handle @midlifecurious, shared a video to her 37,000 followers explaining a new baking hack she attributed to learning from fellow creator @livingwithlandyn.
“I am 53 years old and I just learned parchment paper is supposed to be used wet,” Gornall said in the opening of her video, which has now been viewed more than 1 million times. “You know these sheets that are kind of awkward and they don’t stay on your pan properly and you (have to) fold them … you’re supposed to wet it. And then it moulds better and it’ll do whatever you want it to do.”
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She demonstrated rinsing the sheet of baking paper under a tap before scrunching it into a ball and spreading it flat across a baking tray.
'Brilliant' baking paper hack divides followers
Among more than 4000 comments under the video, Gornall’s followers were equally shocked and impressed with the baking hack.
“I’m 63 and just learned this brilliant trick,” one follower wrote.
“I just started doing this for the past year, how was this not known?” another said, to which Gornall replied that it was “mind boggling”.
“I’ve seen Jamie Oliver do that many times on his cooking shows,” a third follower commented.
But others suggested the rinsing step of the process was unnecessary, and that the same outcome could be achieved by simply scrunching the parchment paper before lining the tray.
"All you have to do it crumple it," one person wrote. "Wetting it isn’t necessary."
“I just crumple mine into a ball and open it up, works every time,” one commenter wrote, while another echoed “you don’t need water, just crumple it up before you use it in the pan”.
There was also discussion surrounding the efficacy of the hack, with some people suggesting it didn’t work as well as claimed.
“I tried it, I won’t do it again,” a disgruntled follower said. “It’s stuck to my bread, and I had a horrible time getting it off.”
“Just tried this with scones … soggy bottoms,” another wrote.
Dessert connoisseur shares personal baking paper hacks
Celebrated pastry chef and chocolatier Kirsten Tibballs even weighed in on the debate, telling Yahoo Lifestyle Australia that the baking paper hack may work on some recipes, but not others.
“I think water is okay for some recipes but with some it will actually create a bit of steam which you don’t want,” Tibballs explained. “If you’re doing a baked cake it will probably give you a bit of wetness on the bottom, which will end up being on the top.”
The dessert connoisseur said her personal favourite baking paper hack was cutting the corners off the parchment paper before placing it on a pan.
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“Especially when using a square pan, I cut a piece out of each corner and oil the pan and it sits beautifully,” she said. “(Chefs) are like origami artists, we cut paper to fit.”
However Tibballs acknowledged that chefs often received baking paper as flat sheets rather than a roll. She also suggested to pre-cut sheets from a roll of baking paper at home before placing them under something flat and storing them in a drawer to “lose that curl”.
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