Which pie dish is the best

Still, with a little patience and the right tools—starting with a sturdy pie plate—beautiful results are within anyone's reach. Confused by the options? Pie dishes come in a wide range of styles and materials, from flimsy disposable supermarket tins to hand-thrown stoneware plates, making it hard to know which one will yield the best bang for the buck.

In search of an educated answer, we spent 20 hours filling, crimping, and baking our way through a lineup of some of the most commonly available and widely recommended pie plates on the market.

Our conclusion: Sometimes the simplest tools really are the best. We also took to the web, consulting user reviews on Amazon and roundups on other established culinary and consumer websites. When picking a roster of pie plates to test, we tried to include representatives from all the major categories. Broadly speaking, metal pie tins conduct heat rapidly and very efficiently, which guarantees a well-cooked bottom crust when making filled pies, such as apple or rhubarb, but can lead to overbrowning and other inconsistencies when working with custard-based pies like pumpkin or buttermilk whose fillings may require a longer cook time to set.

Inexpensive and shatterproof, the majority of metal pie plates are made of aluminum. These days many are also coated with nonstick surfaces that, while making for neat and easy slice removal, can be easily scratched by sharp knives and serving spatulas. Disposable foil pie tins may seem like a convenient choice if you are bringing your pie to a school potluck or other community event or if, like Joanne Chang, who uses them widely at her Flour bakeshops, the pies you are prepping are primarily for sale but their flimsy construction can lead to uneven baking and provides inadequate support for most fillings.

One helpful solution Kate McDermott offered: if you must use a disposable pan, bake it inside a glass or ceramic pan—which will aid with even heat distribution and add stability for handling—and remove it only once it has cooled and is ready to serve. Glass pie pans, of which the Pyrex brand is most ubiquitous, are no-frills, affordable, widely available, and oftentimes the plates that many cooks learn on. Indeed, because their clear material lets you see when the bottom crust is firm, browned, and nicely-baked, they can be a boon to bakers of all experience levels.

They also conduct heat slowly and evenly, allowing the pie's pastry and filling to cook at the same moderate pace although this does also mean that they may require a few more minutes in the oven than their metal counterparts. In recent years, consumer websites have reported some alarming stories of glass baking dishes "exploding" after moving from a hot oven to counters and cooling racks apparently a result of the manufacturers' switch from super heat-resistant borosilicate glass to the slightly more fragile material of tempered soda lime.

But in our tests and in our many previous years of baking with glass pie dishes , we never had one shatter on us, nor did any of the experts we queried, or our friends and neighbors. Weighty in the hand, appealingly earthy, and available in a rainbow of styles and glazes to suit any occasion and mood, pottery and ceramic pie dishes stand out from the pack in terms of aesthetics—and are sure to win appreciative comments when you present them at table.

Like glass dishes, ceramic pie dishes conduct heat slowly and evenly, which helps yield uniformly golden crusts and thoroughly cooked fillings, even when making fruit pies, like apple, that require lengthy cooks to soften down. Some ceramic pans also come with appealing and smartly-designed flourishes, such as ruffled rims that help guide fingers when fluting crusts, or generous handles that make transferring from oven to table a cinch.

While they do tend to be pricier—especially the ones made by the three big French makers: Emile Henry, Le Creuset and Staub—when well cared for, most ceramic pie dishes will last a lifetime and are pretty enough that you'll want to pass them down. Vintage pottery pie dishes can be quite beautiful, too, but if you stumble on one at a flea market or estate sale, exercise caution: older glazes may contain lead, and when in doubt, it's best to avoid them.

A well-performing pie dish needs to do a lot more than look good. Namely: it should be versatile enough to yield evenly baked, golden crusts and thoroughly-cooked fillings every time, whether the task at hand is a fruit pie, savory pie, press-in crust, custard pie, or quiche.

Its size should be generous enough to accommodate an eye-catching pile of fruit when being used for rustic, deep-dish style double crust pies, but not so capacious that the ratio of filling to crust feels skewed when making icebox pies, more delicate custard pies or quiche. Finally, from a value standpoint, a good pie dish should also be sturdy enough to stand up to years of heavy use. Drawing on our personal collection of pie plates, expert recommendations, Amazon's most popular pans, and a few wildcard options thrown in for good measure, we began testing with a lineup of ten pans and then whittled that list down to seven finalists that seemed to best represent the range of prices, styles, and design options on the market.

Our favorite pie dish: Pyrex Basics 9" Pie Plate available at amazon. In a win for value and a victory of function over form, the most inexpensive and arguably simplest pie dish we tested turned out to be our consistent favorite. In both of those cases, as well as during the blind-baking, the material's even heat conduction yielded crisp, uniformly golden pastry layers without any weird pale spots—and because the dish was transparent, gauging doneness was easy as taking a peek at the sides or the bottom.

Cons Requires hand washing Cannot tolerate high heat or nonstick sprays. Buy now at Amazon. Related content feature Ordering a Thanksgiving meal kit? Don't miss these deadlines. Le Creuset Heritage Pie Dish.

Pros Attractive and available in several colors Safe for dishwasher, microwave, and high heat Ample lip. Cons Slightly smaller diameter than other pie plates. Pros Sturdy aluminized steel construction Ceramic nonstick finish makes for easy release Dishwasher safe.

Cons Can't use with metal servingware. Buy now at Williams Sonoma. Pyrex Easy Grab Pie Plate. Pros Can watch for browning through the glass Wide and attractively scalloped rim.

Cons Slightly wider than most other pie pans. Wilton Recipe Right Pie Pan. Pros Lightweight with good handles Nonstick Turns out flaky crusts. Cons Requires hand washing Slightly shallow. Pros Attractive design Safe for dishwasher, microwave, and high heat Deep.

Cons Only available in red Tiny lip make for a tough grasp. Pros Huge capacity Includes dome cover High-heat safe. Cons Browns unevenly Large size may require changes to recipes. Pyrex Basics Pie Plate. Pros Dishwasher and microwave safe.

Cons Browns unevenly Shallow Small rim and sides make it tough to grip. Great Jones Sweetie Pie. Pros Dishwasher-friendly Microwave-safe.

Cons Not entirely non-stick. Buy now at Great Jones. Meet the testers Sharon Franke Contributor. See all of Sharon Franke's reviews. See all of Madison Trapkin's reviews. This is true of any heavy pie plate, whether it's hand-thrown pottery or lacquered ceramic, so think twice about choosing form over function when it comes to your bakeware.

Granted, the greasiness can be mitigated by using a recipe that contains less butter than my own, but comparatively lean and dry doughs are thirsty, eager to absorb moisture from any pie filling, so sogginess will still be an issue with any dough that isn't blind-baked. My personal choice for pie has always been tempered glass , because it's cheap but sturdy, and nonreactive to boot.

Since glass conducts heat more quickly than stone, the butter melts more quickly, too, releasing steam to preserve the dough's flaky layers and turning out a crust that's golden and crisp overall. The same can be said of thin, lightweight ceramic. Despite my deep and passionate love for aluminum in the form of baking sheets, cake pans, and cookware, I'd never actually used aluminum, disposable or otherwise, to bake a pie, because so many recipes like lemon meringue and Key lime require a nonreactive plate.

Therefore, in my tiny kitchen, it's always seemed more convenient to stock simple glass plates instead. But I needed to know: If glass is better than stoneware because it conducts heat so fast, does it follow that aluminum is even better? As a matter of fact, it does. Dirt-cheap disposable aluminum proved to be the greatest surprise of all, baking up an especially crisp and golden crust. While there are some very real logistical difficulties to consider—it will dramatically shorten the time required for a custard pie, invalidating the suggested baking time in recipes based on ceramic or glass—an aluminum pan is without a doubt a fantastic vessel for pie, giving my crust the best browning and texture of all.

Tempered glass is still my favorite overall, due to its sturdiness, nonreactivity, and better-than-average browning, but as I continue to bake and give away a metric crap-ton of pies, there's no doubt that I'll be availing myself of disposable aluminum , knowing that its convenience won't come at the cost of performance. Actively scan device characteristics for identification. Use precise geolocation data. Select personalised content.