You all are starting to make me paranoid about baking with Pyrex...

[*********]

Seems like I've read several different times now on this forum about Pyrex glass baking dishes exploding. This is rather, uh, disconcerting to me, to say the least, but it's never happened to me, nor have I heard of it happening to anyone I know IRL.

 

So, set my mind at ease (or, I guess, convince me to pitch all my Pyrex, LOL).

 

Poll coming.

 

By "Yes, I've had a glass baking dish explode, but it was my fault for causing a rapid temperature change", I mean you put the dish on the stovetop and accidentally turned the burner on under it, or put a hot dish into cold water, or something like that. (Basically, you *know* why the dish exploded, even if it was accidentally).

 

I DON'T mean have you ever had one break because you dropped it, or dropped something heavy on it.

 

Oh, and only answer for if it's actually happened in YOUR home, not if it's happened to a friend/you heard about it happening.

 

Also, if you know of certain brands of glass bakeware that are less likely to explode, please do share the brand and *why they are less inclined to combust. :D

[eternalknot]

I work on an airplane. I bring food from home in a Pyrex, and it's kept in a lunchbag stuffed with blocks of dry ice and also a few blue ice packs that are frozen hard.

 

I take it immediately from the super cold lunchbag (food still frozen) and put it directly into an airplane oven that is already warm or hot because it's already been used to cook food for the passengers.

 

I've done this on a regular basis, for years. I know many other flight attendants who do, too. None has ever shared with me an experience of the pyrex breaking. Maybe temperature matters? Our ovens supposedly only go up to 375F. It's hard to say how accurate that is, as I'm sure it varies from oven to oven and plane to plane.

 

I'm sure it happens, but ... so do panty lines. Take a chance, wear the pretty ones, bake with Pyrex.

[MamaJo]

I had to vote no BUT it happened to my SIL and I was in the next room. Sounded like a gun going off.

[Parrothead]

I've known for years that it could be possible. Says so right on the labeling of the dishes. But I've not had it happen. I've always very careful not to use wet towels or put a hot dish near/in water.

 

I'm not sure what I can use in place of the glass or ceramic since I don't like using all the aluminum pans either.

[stripe]

Crud! I voted never but I did once when making caramel in the microwave.

[Garga]

I'm not sure what I can use in place of the glass or ceramic since I don't like using all the aluminum pans either.

 

 

Stone or cast iron?

[WishboneDawn]

Here's what's going on - Thermal shock.

 

It's funny but I've managed to have 2 or 3 dishes explode through my own negligence but I still use pyrex. :) Apparently though this can happen with ceramic, stoneware and even cast iron (though perhaps not as dramatically).

[Garga]

I had one break. I had a big casserole in it that I was making for my in-laws. It was completely done and I can't remember if I opened the oven door, or was just about to when POP! it broke.

 

What a mess to clean up. 350 degree glass and rice on the bottom of the oven.

[LauraGB]

Yes. Once was with a glass dish. Once was with a ceramic one. Both were completely my fault because I had taken them out of the fridge and put them into a hot oven. But, neither exploded - they just cracked. Disappointing, none the less, though. And stupid. :tongue_smilie: Won't make that mistake a third time, lol.

 

I still use them almost exclusively, though. I don't really love using the aluminum ones I have, and I haven't yet sprung for stainless.

[8circles]

I voted 'other' because it wasn't me but my mother. No rapid temp change but the dish exploded - right after it was taken out of the oven.

 

I've always been super-careful since then & will always use something else to bake if I can.

[Rosie_0801]

I broke one by taking it out of the oven and putting it on cold metal next to the sink. It didn't explode though. It just broke into a few pieces.

 

Rosie

[Cheryl in NM]

I've had an Anchor dish explode because I used it on the stove top. I thought it was just like Pyrex. I've used all my pyrex on the stove top with out anything exploding. I LOVE Pyrex! I don't take Pyrex from the fridge or freezer and put it right to heat though. I have taken hot Pyrex and put it in the fridge and freezer. When I say "hot" I mean uncomfortable to touch for long, but not straight out of the oven.

[Alte Veste Academy]

I had Pyrex explode about 10 years ago. I pulled a beautiful Chile Relleno Casserole out of the oven one day and set it on an electric burner that I had just turned off. Direct heat is a no-no. It shattered. We went out to dinner. :glare:

[LMD]

I had one break. I had a big casserole in it that I was making for my in-laws. It was completely done and I can't remember if I opened the oven door, or was just about to when POP! it broke.

 

What a mess to clean up. 350 degree glass and rice on the bottom of the oven.

 

Yep, similar happened here. Exploded while still in the oven, lots of fun to clean up :glare:. Big POP. I've also had one break which was my fault, I put it on the stovetop to rest, forgetting that even though the element was off it was still hot. It cracked.

 

I use mainly cast iron now. :001_smile:

[Dmmetler]

Pyrex is lab grade glassware, and it's pretty durable-but I was taught at an early age that you don't go from hot to cold with anything glass-that it could shatter. And I have a dad who was MORE than willing to demonstrate in the contained area for dangerous projects how this could happen :) (the joys of growing up with a chemistry/physics professor who had a good sized lab at the college. I kind of wish we lived closer so DD could have some of those experiences that I consider too dangerous to give her at home :) ).

[RegGuheert]

Really??!! A third of you have had a glass *baking* dish *explode*??

 

Sign me,

 

Now I'm Also Getting Paranoid in VA

[Ellie]

I am old. I've been married almost 37 years. I've never had exploding bakeware. That is all.

[WishboneDawn]

I am old. I've been married almost 37 years. I've never had exploding bakeware. That is all.

 

You need to try harder.:glare:

 

:D

[WishboneDawn]

Really??!! A third of you have had a glass *baking* dish *explode*??

 

Sign me,

 

Now I'm Also Getting Paranoid in VA

 

It's really not a big deal. It breaks like windshield glass, chunks, not shards.

 

When it the chunks fall on cheap linoleum flooring though, you're left with a permanent burn mark. :glare:

[Sasharowan]

Other, I don't use glass.

[Natalieclare]

I have had a glass baking dish explode in the oven. I can't figure out why it happened; it was just a regular old coffee cake, almost done, when BANG--it went to smithereens all over the bottom of my oven. Sigh. We were all really looking forward to that coffee cake.

[TKDmom]

I voted no. I bake with Pyrex all the time. One time, someone else broke a glass casserole dish in my oven--but I think she poured water into it while it was in the (hot) oven.

 

ETA: My dish that exploded was another brand--not Pyrex. I tend to trust the Pyrex to be higher quality, but I don't really have any basis for my opinion. :tongue_smilie: Maybe we should have another poll to see whether it's Pyrex or another brand that tends to break.

Edited August 25, 2011 by bonniebeth4

[RegGuheert]

It's really not a big deal. It breaks like windshield glass, chunks, not shards.

Shew!! So it's nothing like Corelleware! (We've gotten quite expert at breaking Corelle dishes! ;))

[Laurie]

I am old. I've been married almost 37 years. I've never had exploding bakeware. That is all.

 

Old Pyrex is better than new Pyrex. :)

 

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=232226

[Sara in AZ]

I had Pyrex explode about 10 years ago. I pulled a beautiful Chile Relleno Casserole out of the oven one day and set it on an electric burner that I had just turned off. Direct heat is a no-no. It shattered. We went out to dinner. :glare:

 

This must have been what happened to me the one time my Pyrex exploded. I was baking fish. Maybe broiling? I'm vague on if it's okay to use it under the broiler. Probably not? The direct heat thing?

[Abigail4476]

I have had a baking dish explode, but it was my fault because I left it sitting on top of an electric burner on the stove top. I've never had one explode in the oven.

[Abigail4476]

It's really not a big deal. It breaks like windshield glass, chunks, not shards.

 

When it the chunks fall on cheap linoleum flooring though, you're left with a permanent burn mark. :glare:

 

This made me :lol: (at your expense). Reminds me of dropping an iron on our carpet in a rental house years ago. When we moved, we cut a small piece of carpet out of the back corner of the closet and replaced the burned spot. It looked seamless to me, but thinking back, I think we should have glued it to the pad underneath. I'm thinking the next renter found the patch the first time they vacuumed. :tongue_smilie:

[Ellyndria]

Just saw someone post today on Facebook where their glass bakeware exploded after taking it out of the oven. I first heard about it here on these forums a couple Thanksgivings ago. I knew glass could crack/break with sudden temperature changes; what I didn't know about was that Pyrex type bakeware could explode into a bunch of tiny shards with seemingly no extreme temperature change. Most of the examples where of them exploding while still in the oven or shortly after coming out of the oven. Some of the examples were of them exploding just while sitting in the cabinet...or of the pyrex measuring cup shattering when placed in the sink after measuring a liquid.

 

I'm using cast iron for baking now, but I still have a few other pieces hanging around that I'd like to replace with something else...

[Aquinas Academy]

It happened to me once and I have no idea why. The dish (along with our dessert) had been in the oven for a while when suddenly there was a loud bang and I opened the oven to discover glass and apple crumble everywhere. :glare:

[Liz CA]

Old Pyrex is better than new Pyrex. :)

 

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=232226

 

This explains it. All my Pyrex dishes are 10+ years old - nothing ever exploded.

[WishboneDawn]

Old Pyrex is better than new Pyrex. :)

 

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=232226

 

To be fair, according to Snopes CR did say the testing they used was "contrary to instructions". So the jury may still be out on that.

[RoughCollie]

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/search.htm?header_health_search.x=0&header_health_search.y=0&query=pyrex

 

Scroll down. There are a bunch of articles in Consumer Reports about Pyrex. The January 2011 issue covered it.

[clarkacademy]

Happened to me for the first time lastnight!

[LaxMom]

I've only ever had one explode when a burner was accidentally turned on under it. Same with any other non-metal bakeware.

 

And we still have a ring on the ceiling from when my husband forgot to put water in the percolator... That was way more dramatic than bakeware! :lol:

[TammyinTN]

Yes it's happen to us as well. It was a mess to cleanup and ruined my hashbrown casserole. :glare:

[Jyniffrec]

I've had an Anchor dish explode because I used it on the stove top. I thought it was just like Pyrex. I've used all my pyrex on the stove top with out anything exploding. I LOVE Pyrex! I don't take Pyrex from the fridge or freezer and put it right to heat though. I have taken hot Pyrex and put it in the fridge and freezer. When I say "hot" I mean uncomfortable to touch for long, but not straight out of the oven.

 

I did this with pyrex when I was a lot younger. It exploded all over the kitchen and my sister and brother-in-law were coming to visit from far away in just a few minutes. That was yet another lesson my mother didn't teach me in the kitchen that I had to learn on my own. Talk about science experiments! :lol:

[Sebastian (a lady)]

Seems like I've read several different times now on this forum about Pyrex glass baking dishes exploding. This is rather, uh, disconcerting to me, to say the least, but it's never happened to me, nor have I heard of it happening to anyone I know IRL.

 

So, set my mind at ease (or, I guess, convince me to pitch all my Pyrex, LOL).

 

Poll coming.

 

By "Yes, I've had a glass baking dish explode, but it was my fault for causing a rapid temperature change", I mean you put the dish on the stovetop and accidentally turned the burner on under it, or put a hot dish into cold water, or something like that. (Basically, you *know* why the dish exploded, even if it was accidentally).

 

I DON'T mean have you ever had one break because you dropped it, or dropped something heavy on it.

 

Oh, and only answer for if it's actually happened in YOUR home, not if it's happened to a friend/you heard about it happening.

 

Also, if you know of certain brands of glass bakeware that are less likely to explode, please do share the brand and *why they are less inclined to combust. :D

 

I've only had a glass baking dish explode when I was dumb enough to try to use it on the stove top.

 

I have had a glass plate explode in the cupboard, just from the weight of the other plates on top of it. (Not Pyrex, but a durable restaurant grade dessert plate.)

 

I don't have a lot of glass bakeware, but I have no intention of getting rid of what I have.

[Onceuponatime]

Yes, I accidentally set one on a hot burner. My linoleum still has triangular burn marks from the shards of hot glass.

 

This is one reason I am so tempted to believe in guardian angels. I was at the counter next to the stove with a baby on my hip. Not one piece of glass touched us. When I think of what could have happened, I feel sick.

[flyingiguana]

I've had a couple drinking glasses explode. Does that count?

 

They were just sitting on the table with an iced drink in them. Years later, we were still finding shards.

 

I retired those glasses. The first might have been a fluke, but the second?

 

I also had a bathroom sink explode in a minor way.

[TrixieB]

I voted "other".

 

I've never seen Pyrex explode IRL.

 

However, I watched someone take a Pyrex baking dish (MY brand-new Pyrex baking dish!) from under the broiler and run it under cold water in the sink. The dish instantly broke in half, but it didn't explode. This was about 1988. Maybe the formulation of the glass was different then?

[hsmom]

All my bake ware is Pyrex and I have never had a problem.

[RegGuheert]

Old Pyrex is better than new Pyrex. :)

 

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=232226

This explains it. All my Pyrex dishes are 10+ years old - nothing ever exploded.

And of course the reason the old Pyrex is so much better than the new Pyrex is that the old Pyrex has much more LEAD in it! ;)

 

 

 

 

 

O.K. Just in case ANYONE thinks this is true, I need to point out that I totally made this up! But I suppose it *might* be true... :D

[Word Nerd]

My mom and I were busy making different dishes for Thanksgiving, and a Pyrex dish came out of the oven and by mistake ended up on a burner that was turned off but still hot. I was surprised that this was enough to break it, but it was still user error.

[mrs.m]

I have only had Pampered Chef stoneware explode in the oven.

[AngieW in Texas]

My mother used a LOT of pyrex and she used it on the stovetop too.

 

When I moved into my first apartment, I bought some pyrex too. It cracked the very first time I tried using it on the stovetop. It didn't actually explode, just cracked into several pieces and then all the stuff in it just poured out onto the burner. It was quite a mess to clean up.

 

I had never known that you weren't supposed to use Pyrex on the stovetop because that's all that my mom had ever used and she used it on the stovetop all the time. Her Pyrex was very old though, from the 1950s. I don't ever remember her buying any in my lifetime.

[mrs.m]

My grandma had a set that could be used on the stove top. They looked like little glass sauce pans. But I think the bottom wasn't glass? I don't remember...

[The Girls' Mom]

I had one explode after taking it out of the oven...so a temperature change, but not rapid.

 

My BIL had one of the Pyrex sauce pans explode while boiling water in it.

[abbeyej]

I've seen it happen twice. Once my fault, once not. Both times were silly in-the-moment mistakes, but very clear causes.

 

The time I did it, I was roasting a chicken in a pyrex dish at a rather high temp. I'd foolishly forgotten to add water to the dish when I stuck it in the oven. So then I even *more* foolishly poured a cup of liquid into the dish after it was already really hot. The *instant* I'd done it, I knew what I'd done. But it was too late. ... I got to have dinner out that night. ;)

 

The time my mom did it, we were making a holiday dinner (Christmas? Thanksgiving?) and there was a pyrex casserole dish of stuffing that I'd just pulled out of the oven and set on top of the stove because we'd used up all the counter space. Mom came along and turned a burner on -- on her own stove! -- but turned on the wrong one. Moments later, the stuffing began to burn and smell, so we realized what had happened, and someone whisked the dish off the stove and onto a trivet in the next room. We thought crisis had been averted. ... lol. No. 5 minutes later it exploded. ;) hehe...

 

It was a mess, but nobody was hurt either time.

[TheAutumnOak]

Once again The Hive has brought something to my attention that I have never heard of ;)...

I have never even heard of someone's Pyrex dish exploding...I am slowly moving from the ignorant to the well informed (or maybe the paranoid) :tongue_smilie:

[WishboneDawn]

My mother used a LOT of pyrex and she used it on the stovetop too.

 

When I moved into my first apartment, I bought some pyrex too. It cracked the very first time I tried using it on the stovetop. It didn't actually explode, just cracked into several pieces and then all the stuff in it just poured out onto the burner. It was quite a mess to clean up.

 

I had never known that you weren't supposed to use Pyrex on the stovetop because that's all that my mom had ever used and she used it on the stovetop all the time. Her Pyrex was very old though, from the 1950s. I don't ever remember her buying any in my lifetime.

 

The stove top cookware is a little different from the baking stuff. They're not interchangeable.