Beware of glass bakeware

[Laurie]

Last night I read an article in Consumer Reports about exploding glass bakeware like Pyrex and Anchor. Supposedly the American companies started using a different, shall we say "greener", material called soda lime and it is more likely to explode than the older stuff made from borosilicate. Just reading about some of the accidents/injuries that people have had in their homes makes me so thankful that I've been using my mom's Pyrex and Corningware casseroles, etc. from the 70's! She had given me quite a few pieces and I took the rest after she passed away. ( If you have any older relatives who are moving/downsizing you might want to see if you can snag some of their old "antiques" made of the safer material if this is something you cook with.)

 

It was interesting to read about the tests CR did...they even tested a very old piece from a staff member's mother and found that it withstood 500 degree temps without exploding even though this is well above what the manufacturer's directions allow. The newer stuff was exploding at lower temperatures.

 

Here's a link to the article and it includes an interesting video showing the thermal shock explosions in the CR lab:

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine-archive/2011/january/home-garden/glass-cookware/glass-cookware/index.htm

[Tammyla]

Thanks for the link.

 

PS...That video was pretty shocking.

Edited December 23, 2010 by Tammyla

[TechWife]

This happened to me a few years ago. I removed a dish from the oven and placed it on a cooling rack & it shattered. Thankfully, it didn't shatter right away, I had moved away from it - probably no more than 30 seconds elapsed between the time I put it down and the time it shattered, though. It was very scary.

 

At the time, it contained about 1/2 inch of water and a cut butternut squash w/butter & cinnamon in the hollow, so hot water and glass went everywhere.

[WiseOwlKnits]

That happened to me a couple of years ago. Fortunately I had just set it down on my stove and moved away to put a trivet on our table to set it on so I wasn't hurt. But hot barbecue sauce and glass went EVERYWHERE. It was awful.

[babysparkler]

It happened to me a couple years ago too. :glare:

[BigMamaBird]

My MIL had the exploding glass bakeware happen to her one Thanksgiving. All the side dishes were on the counters and she took a glass dish out of the oven and placed it on a hot burner. It sounded like a gunshot and glass shards flew everywhere. A few people got minor cuts and we had to dump every single thing that was out because we just didn't know how far the glass flew, we were finding it everywhere.

 

We wound up having turkey cold cuts on white bread for Thanksgiving that year.

[missesd]

Guess I'll be using all metal bakeware...

[Retired]

I am in the Pyrex explosion club.:001_smile: I found an old Pyrex "cook book" and well the new stuff can't handle the cooking methods of the old book.

[Prairie~Phlox]

My MIL had the exploding glass bakeware happen to her one Thanksgiving. All the side dishes were on the counters and she took a glass dish out of the oven and placed it on a hot burner. It sounded like a gunshot and glass shards flew everywhere. A few people got minor cuts and we had to dump every single thing that was out because we just didn't know how far the glass flew, we were finding it everywhere.

 

We wound up having turkey cold cuts on white bread for Thanksgiving that year.

 

 

Yeah hot burners are dangerous if you do that.

[Jennifer in MI]

This happened to me too! I had just made 8 loaves of bread and they were rising. I had 4 pizza crusts out that I just made. I had tomatoes in the oven roasting. And, I had started dinner on the stove. I took out one of the loaves of bread and set it down on my stove (not hot) and it exploded. My dd was standing right there. I lost everything I'd been making and dd and I both had cuts all over us. It was SOOOOOOOO scary.