Best Kitchen Towels: Flour Sack, Cotton Terry and Linen

Utopia's flour sacks are 28 inch squares of 100% ring spun cotton, hemmed on the edges and sold by the dozen for about the price of two designer tea towels. They are thin, light and lint-free, which is what a flour sack should be.

Use them for everything messy: straining stock or yogurt, rolling up washed salad greens, covering dough while it rises, wiping spills, drying hands at the stove. At this price there is no guilt in staining one with beet juice or turning it into a cleaning cloth.

Wash them before first use; new flour sacks absorb poorly until the sizing is washed out. Skip them if you want a towel to display. These are for work.

The catch. Thinner than the Aunt Martha's towels, and not absorbent enough for drying a full rack of dishes.

Aunt Martha's belongs to Colonial Patterns of Kansas City and is best known for embroidery patterns and the plain white towels people stitch them onto. These are 33 by 38 inches, far larger than the usual kitchen towel, 100% cotton, hemmed on all four sides and prewashed and bleached.

The size is the reason to buy them. One covers a full sheet pan of rolls, lines a bread basket with enough left over to fold over the top, or wraps a whole head of washed lettuce. They dry glassware well once they have been washed a few times.

Skip them if your drawer is small; seven of these fill it. The 28 inch squares from the same brand are the compact alternative.

The catch. Plain white with no loop, and big enough to be awkward on an oven handle.

Linen is the traditional glass cloth for a reason. Flax fibers are long and smooth, so they shed almost no lint, and linen dries quickly between uses, which keeps the towel from going sour. Solino's towels are 100% European flax linen, 17 by 26 inches, with a loop for hanging.

They start slightly stiff and become softer and more absorbent every time they are washed. Wash warm, dry on low or line dry, and iron only if you like a crisp fold. The natural color hides the tea and wine stains a linen towel is going to collect.

Skip them for heavy dish drying or spills; linen absorbs well but a pair is not enough for a dinner party's worth of plates. That is the terry towel's job.

The catch. Crisp and a little stiff for the first few washes, and wrinkled unless ironed.

Garnier-Thiebaut was founded in Gérardmer, in the Vosges, in 1833, and still weaves its linens in the region. This towel is extra-long staple cotton in a jacquard damask weave, with the pattern woven in rather than printed: an olive tree in green and grey, with a border of olive branches.

At 22 by 30 inches it is generously sized, with a hanging label, and it is machine washable. It is the towel for the oven handle, the one guests see, and it is also a good host gift, wrapped around a bottle of oil or a jar of something homemade.

Skip it if you want a workhorse by the dozen; at about $32 a towel, this is one or two for the hook, not a stack for the drawer.

The catch. Expensive for a towel, and damask cotton is less absorbent than terry for heavy drying.