When making brownies, how do you prevent them from sticking to the pan?

Butter or Pam

Crisco and flour. The whole pan. First the Crisco then flour and shake it around and throw out excess.

Fit a folded sheet of heavy-duty aluminum foil into the pan before you pour the batter in. When the brownies are done, you can use the foil as a “sling” to remove them.

A parchment paper sling would also work but it’s harder to work with.

All praise to Cook’s Illustrated for this trick

I do exactly what @Qingu said with the aluminum foil. If you would rather use parchment paper, spray the pan with a non-stick spray first to make the parchment paper stay in the pan and easier to work with. Then work in the parchment paper. The spray helps the parchment paper stay in place.

I made brownies this week. I place Hershey’s Symphony bars on the top of my batter and push them in a little and barely cover them with batter. Oh, my. They are delicious.

I line the base and sides with non-stick baking paper.

Some company just started making a baking paper that is foil on one side and paper on the other. So far it’s worked great. We’ve only used it 2 or 3 times. I can check out the brand if you want when I get home.

I also use baking paper. I completely line the tin up to above the edges so you can lift out the brownie slab by the paper.

Butter and flour.

I like the “sling” idea, that is the way I do it too.
By the way, when a cake or other baked item calls for a greased and floured pan, if the cake is chocolate, I always use cocoa powder instead of flour. That way you don’t get that telltale white residue on the outside of your cake.

I cover the base and sides with butter or Pam.

The trick with parchment paper is cutting it to fit the pan. In the case of a square pan I cut off the length I need and weight it in place while I crease paper to fit the pan. I make a cut at each corner so it can smoothly wrap around it. Once it’s cut and creased properly I remove the weight and pour in the batter, the weight of which holds the paper in place. Once your brownies are baked and cooled you can lift the whole thing out of the pan and chances are you won’t even have to wash the pan. Win!

Reynolds Nonstick Baking Paper. Foil on the outside, paper on the inside. Haven’t tried it for brownies but it works for everything we’ve tried in a short time.

pam

Just made some for a meeting at work tomorrow. Used Pam and cocoa powder in the pan. They came out about 3 minutes ago. I’ll cut and let you all know how they came out.

@bkcunningham: Symphony bars do sound great! I looked at them this weekend and they looked decadent! I put pecans on top of mine. I’m into texture and fiber and added protein!