Custom Printed Parchment Paper.

The coating, and it decides everything.

Parchment is coated with silicone. Silicone is stable at oven temperatures, so parchment is typically rated to around 220°C. It can line a baking tray, sit under roasting vegetables, or hold hot fried food without breaking down.

Wax paper is coated with paraffin or soy wax. Wax melts well below oven temperature. Put wax paper in a hot oven and it softens, transfers wax onto the food, and can smoke.

They look similar and are constantly confused, which is how wax paper ends up in ovens.

If your kitchen stocks only one, make it parchment. It does everything wax paper does — cold wrapping, deli interleaving, sandwich wrapping — and it also works hot. Wax paper is cheaper, so it earns its place in high-volume cold applications, but it cannot cover for parchment.

Yes, with low-migration food-safe inks specified for contact at temperature — tell us at quote stage whether the printed sheets go in the oven or are only used for serving, because it changes the ink system.

In practice most printed parchment is used front of house rather than in the oven: basket liners, board liners, wrapping for handed-over food. That is where the print is seen, and it is a very cheap branded surface that appears in every customer photograph.

If sheets do go into the oven, keep artwork simple. Heat and grease both reduce contrast over time, and fine detail is the first thing to become unreadable.