I dislike the paper wrappings on my store bought muffins. They are more troublesome to unwrap and messier.
I see silicone muffin pans are available today. If I am correct in the assumption that they do not require parchment, why don’t store bakeries use them?
Other than small bakeries making small batches, those flexible silicone pans are probably not ideal for mass production where a “batch” of muffins may be thousands of them.
So, rather than re-tool the production lines, (which would be wickedly expensive) they stay with metal pans. The paper liners are dirt-cheap, and need no cleanup of the pans between batches. Unlike us at home spooning batter into pans, the muffin factories squirt just the right amount of batter into just the right spot and don’t dribble it on the pans.
Spraying the pans with non-stick stuff would require fairly frequent cleaning - probably between each batch.
Once they’re baked, cooled, and tossed out of the pans, the paper liners help hold the muffin together as they get jostled around in shipping. “Naked” muffins would probably shed a lot of crumbs and look uh, crummy. The wrapper also will help hold in moisture so the muffins don’t dry out too fast.
but the majority of consumers prefer the paper.
gotspasswords has it all down, but I just had a memory flash from childhood, which has remained buried for these many decades.
After taking the paper off the muffin, and eating the muffin (or cupcake), I would take the wrapper, which still had a lot of muffin remnants encrusted, and chew it up like gum, til it was used up, and then ditch the muffin cud.
It was a secret little lagniappe then, but seems mighty nasty now.
Was I alone in this odd pleasure?
Not that, but I did run my teeth along the liners to scrape the good stuff it off.
Thank you, gotpasswords for a very informative response. As a bonus, I also learned a new word lagniappe.
Stumps. Not stems. Muffin stumps.
Not to be confused with muffin tops !
According to my mother, and other expert bakers*, they aren’t even ideal for home use!
They are too flexible, tend to bend and spill just trying to put them into the oven. Plus they aren’t very sturdy; a little nick in the edge and it will tend to grow like a crack in a windshield, and soon it’s torn all the way across. Mom is still using some muffin tins that she received as wedding presents in 1949; these silicone pans wouldn’t last one-tenth as long, she says.
*And that has recently been confirmed by Consumer Reports, which found much the same problems.
nope.