Food & Wine surveyed pastry chefs, restaurant executives and a fast-casual chain’s culinary operations lead this year, asking each which foods they buy premade rather than make from scratch.
Their answers clustered around a few repeat categories: laminated dough, fermented condiments and a short list of nostalgic packaged treats. The following eight items come straight from those interviews, sourced to the chefs who buy them off a shelf.
Puff pastry
Puff pastry depends on lamination, the repeated folding of butter into dough that creates hundreds of paper-thin layers. The process demands precise temperature control and production space most home kitchens cannot offer. Frozen puff pastry delivers consistent, reliable layers and flakiness without the demands of lamination.
Frozen versions often turn out fluffier and crispier than anything baked at home because professional tools shape the dough more evenly.
Keep Dufour Pastry Kitchens’ Classic Puff Pastry stocked in the freezer year-round for a quick tomato-and-mozzarella tart.
Croissants
Lamination trips up croissants just as it trips up puff pastry, but croissants add a yeasted proof on top of the folding. Miroslav Uskovic, executive pastry chef at Gramercy Tavern, tells home bakers to try making croissants once purely for the experience, since most people never repeat it after the first attempt.
Chefs polled by The Kitchn settled on two retailers as reliable substitutes, pointing to Trader Joe’s frozen dough and Costco’s bakery case as the closest thing to a bakery result without the proofing failures that plague beginners. Buying the dough frozen still leaves room for a final rise and bake at home, preserving part of the process without its riskiest steps.
Doughnuts
Some doughnuts are remembered less for perfection than for the feeling attached to them. The slightly messy glaze, the familiar sweetness, and the simple texture of an old favorite can sometimes feel more satisfying than a carefully crafted artisan version.
For many people, the appeal of a classic doughnut is not about novelty or presentation. It is about the memories connected to childhood mornings, neighborhood shops, road trips, and the small routines that made certain treats feel special.
A mass-market doughnut may offer something a more refined version cannot: the exact taste and texture people already know and love.
Ladyfingers
Some desserts are better when every component is homemade. Tiramisu is not always one of them.
Ladyfingers may look simple: a light, sweet cookie with little flavor on its own, but their real purpose is to absorb the strong coffee, balance the bitterness, and provide structure for the creamy layers around them.
Making them from scratch requires extra time and precision for a component that often plays a supporting role. Once soaked in coffee and layered with mascarpone, cocoa, and other ingredients, the difference between homemade and store-bought versions becomes far less noticeable.
For most home bakers, buying ladyfingers is not a shortcut that takes away from the dessert. It is a practical choice that leaves more time for the parts of tiramisu where the effort actually shows.
Pop-Tarts
Numerator Insights data found that 39.7% of U.S. households bought Pop-Tarts toaster pastries in the previous 52 weeks, purchasing them an average of 3.6 times during that period. That staying power helps explain why attempts to recreate them from scratch often miss the point.
The appeal of Pop-Tarts has never depended only on the pastry itself. It is the entire moment surrounding it: the familiar wrapper, the quick breakfast before school or work, the crumbs on the counter, and the convenience of having something ready without preparation.
A homemade toaster pastry may be fresher or more carefully made, but it competes against decades of familiarity. For many people, the original is not simply a food product to improve; it is a small ritual that already feels complete.
Ice cream cones
Some bakery items succeed by specializing narrowly rather than diversifying. The industry has refined consistent crispness and a classic brown sugar flavor since the 1980s.
Joy Cone Co has spent decades manufacturing cones as its primary product, a level of specialization that gives it an edge over any home method involving a waffle iron and a cone mold.
Dress up a store-bought cone with a decorative paper sleeve rather than attempting a homemade version for a special occasion.
Thai curry paste
Certain scratch recipes fail not because of technique but because the ingredients are difficult to find outside specialty markets.
Fresh curry paste recipes call for ingredients like galangal and kaffir lime leaves that many American grocery stores do not stock consistently.
That is why many home cooks turn to prepared curry pastes. A quality store-bought version is not simply a shortcut; it is a practical way to access a flavor foundation that reflects a complex cooking tradition.
The choice also highlights an important reality of global cuisine: authenticity is not always measured by making every ingredient from scratch. Sometimes the most realistic way to cook a traditional dish at home is using the tools that make those flavors accessible.
Condiments
Mustard and soy sauce sit near the bottom of most chefs’ from-scratch priority lists.
Some ingredients aren’t worth overcomplicating, especially condiments made through processes like fermentation and aging that take specialized equipment and time to do right at home.
Mayonnaise stands out as an exception worth making, since it comes together with two or three ingredients and tastes noticeably better fresh, but mustard and soy sauce rarely reward the same effort.
