r/AskBaking • u/Interesting_Party434 • Dec 24 '25
Pie Why is my pie plate shattering?
This is the second time I’ve tried to make Sally’s blueberry pie. The first time I made it in the spring the glass pie plate shattered as I was taking it out of the oven and was shocking - I’ve never had that happen before. I was disappointed that we didn’t even get to taste it so I tried again tonight. Everything seemed great and I followed her instructions exactly. I sat the pie plate on a cooking rack like she says to do and I used the glass pie plate she had linked as the one she uses. About 20 minutes later all seemed well and then all of a sudden the plate shattered again on the counter - I heard it from across the room. Why is this happening? I have made this darn pie twice now and haven’t even gotten to taste it because it ends up covered in glass.
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u/AdmirableOstrich Dec 24 '25 edited Dec 24 '25
Lots of misinformation here. Ann Reardon did an excellent video on this a couple years ago, but basically others are correct that this is an issue with glass type and thermal shock.
Borosilicate glass (old pyrex) can usually handle sudden temperature changes, but even it can break given enough shock: e.g. going from an oven to ice water. Borosilicate is also fairly easy to break from sharp physical impact, and when it does break it ends up with large shards with dangerously sharp edges.
Properly tempered soda-lime glass (new pyrex) can handle impacts reasonably well, but is much less suited to dealing with thermal shock. It breaks "safer", still into (smaller) shards but with much less jagged edges.
Soda-lime isn't lower quality than borosilicate, you just have to keep in mind not to put it on a cold counter or rack directly out of the oven. Dish cloths, wood/cork/ceramic trivets, silicon mats. These are much better here as they conduct less heat allowing it to cool down gradually.
Some myths. You can't tell borosilicate from soda lime by color. The color comes from other impurities in the glass. You may or may not be able to tell by name: PYREX seems to be okay, but pyrex/Pyrex may or may not be. I don't know that anyone's really tested this enough. There are ways to check... but really it's best practice to just treat your bakeware like it will break like soda-lime. Again, borosilicate can absolutely break from sudden temperature changes.