Great British Baking Show Pastry Brush

The bakers on The Great British Baking Show have Zeal Silicone Pastry Brushes (Amazon - Amazon UK). These are very simple 100% silicone pastry brushes, with a nice aesthetic, smooth form and come in 12 colors.

These brushes are great for slathering on melted butter, sauces, egg washes and BBQ sauces depending on the application. They are made from a 100% BPA free, high quality silicone, and are great up to 250ºC (~480ºF). Which means as long as you don't leave the brush on a burner or a grill it's probably going to be fine - Just like most things! It also means that it's fine to put through a dishwasher if you don't have a cleaning crew in the back of your personal tent... So yea, like literally all of us common bakers.

Additionally Zeal makes a couple claims that pique my interest. Their claims address both the qualms I normally have with silicone pastry brushes.

The first is that the Zeal silicone brushes are 'non-shed.' Having ordered some horribly cheap silicone pastry brushes in the past, this is wonderful. Normally the cheap silicone bristles 'shed' thin flakes of the silicone as they're used. It is unpleasant and unsettling to have them going into your food.

The second is that they say their bristles are 'high load.' Which seems to claim their brushes pick up more butter/sauce/egg wash/ etc. than typical silicone brushes. I'm very skeptical of this claim and will address it further in the 'where to get it and options' section below.

If you're in the US and look for Zeal you're probably going to find Zeal Optics. They're fantastic... for skiing and snowboarding, less so for baking. Unless you're going for some sort of rad-baker look or just simply hate chopping onions. I'm game to see some super rad bakers.

However, if you're in the UK (greetings!), you're going to be more apt to find Zeal (Amazon UK Store).

Zeal is a UK based company producing cookware and utensils from silicone, Melamine, and BPA-free plastics. They produce their products in 12 fun colors and most of their equipment has a very sleek look to it. They have a 30 day return period on their products and a 1 year warranty. Though if you're acquiring their goods in the US I'm skeptical either of these would be acknowledged (they claim to only ship to the UK).

Being from the UK and coming in fun colors sounds like a recipe to eventually arrive on The Great British Baking Show - hey, congrats! Crafting products from high quality silicone - doubly so - as it is easy to hand wash and is fairly temperature resistant.

On the downside the Melamine products are not going to be microwave safe, and while they may look good, this limits their usability.

Even though Zeal is a UK based company they are easily available on both US Amazon and UK Amazon. However, you're probably going to have better luck if you have warranty issues and you live in the UK. All that said the silicone pastry brushes seem to sell out on the Amazon UK store, and their website more frequently than on US Amazon.

Perhaps the reason the Great British Baking Show's pastry brush by Zeal is in stock on US Amazon is the price. Depending on the color they range from $14 to $20. Which is pretty steep, though they go for roughly £14 in the UK. Maybe they are that good?

On this side of the Pond I found that the OXO Good Grips Silicone Basting & Pastry Brush works pretty well. It does not shed silicone like some of the cheaper-oh-you-get-this-for-free-because-you-ordered-a-spoon silicone pastry brushes I've tried from Amazon. Its fairly cheap and easy to wash. On the downside, it just does not pick up what ever I'm working with that well. Which may just be a byproduct of slippery things not sticking to slippery things.

That said if I'm making something like baklava and need to get melted butter down fast via a pastry brush I run to walmart, grab a 5 pack of these horrible little boar bristle brushes for like 5 dollars, use them 1 or 2 times and throw them away. They are impossible to clean, but boy oh boy do they pick up and put down a TON of stuff quickly.