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The Best Pie Plate

By Daniela Galarza and Marguerite Preston
Updated
Three pies, baked using our three picks for best pie plate, shown on a table alongside plants, plates, and candles.
Photo: Sarah Kobos

Whether you fill your pie with crisp apples, sour cherries, pumpkin custard, or chocolate cream, a great pie plate can help it look good and taste great, preventing slumping crusts and soggy bottoms. We’ve tested 19 pie plates since 2013, and we recommend the affordable OXO Good Grips Glass 9″ Pie Plate With Lid. It’s just the right size, it bakes evenly, and it allows you to check if the bottom of your pie is browned.

Everything we recommend

Our pick

At 2 inches deep, this dish holds more than most glass plates we tested. It’s better able to handle dramatic temperature changes such as going from freezer to oven, it bakes evenly, and it lets you easily see when the bottom of your pie is browned.

Buying Options

$15 $12 from Bloomingdale's

Price reflects in cart

Also great

Deep and sturdy, this pie plate bakes more evenly than other ceramic dishes we tested, holds up under a broiler (which glass can’t do), and comes in several elegant colors.

Runner-up

If you like to make cream pies or prefer extra crust, the 1½-inch-deep Pyrex is the ideal size and bakes a beautiful crust.

Buying Options

Our pick

At 2 inches deep, this dish holds more than most glass plates we tested. It’s better able to handle dramatic temperature changes such as going from freezer to oven, it bakes evenly, and it lets you easily see when the bottom of your pie is browned.

Buying Options

$15 $12 from Bloomingdale's

Price reflects in cart

The OXO Good Grips Glass 9″ Pie Plate With Lid makes baking pies a piece of cake. It conducts heat evenly and gently, and in our tests it produced some of the most evenly golden-brown crusts. There’s no true standard size for pie dishes, but the OXO plate’s interior, at 2 inches deep, holds more than most glass plates, accommodating a wider range of recipes. Its rim is also wider than those of most other plates we tested, which helps crusts stay up and leaves plenty of room to shape a crimped edge. And unlike the tempered-glass Pyrex plate we tested, this OXO dish is made of thick borosilicate glass, which allows it to go from freezer to oven with a much lower risk of breaking from the shock of such rapid temperature changes. It even comes with a plastic lid, making it easier to transport to potlucks or parties. Finally, its simple design won’t distract from your gorgeous pies or clash with other servingware.

Also great

Deep and sturdy, this pie plate bakes more evenly than other ceramic dishes we tested, holds up under a broiler (which glass can’t do), and comes in several elegant colors.

If you care a lot about presentation and you want a pretty plate that comes in multiple color options, the Emile Henry 9-Inch Pie Dish is one of our longtime favorites. It holds about as much as the OXO plate, and in our tests it baked more evenly than other ceramic plates we tried, transferring heat gently for smooth custard fillings and wonderfully jammy, evenly browned fruit pies. The slightly wavy rim helps guide crust crimping but doesn’t get in the way of other designs as some more dramatically rippled rims do. The Emile Henry can go safely from freezer to oven, and unlike a glass plate, it can also withstand baking under the broiler, which you may want to do to quickly toast a meringue pie. If you don’t mind the steeper price and can judge your pie’s doneness without seeing the bottom browning, the Emile Henry is a great choice.

Runner-up

If you like to make cream pies or prefer extra crust, the 1½-inch-deep Pyrex is the ideal size and bakes a beautiful crust.

Buying Options

If you’re looking for a shallower plate, which is good for custard pies or for anyone who likes a high ratio of crust to filling, we recommend the Pyrex 9″ Glass Pie Plate. At 1½ inches deep, it holds about 2¾ cups less than OXO’s glass dish but is just big enough for a classic pumpkin pie, and it can make a thicker fruit pie if you pile the fruit high. It bakes evenly, and like the OXO it allows you to see when the bottom of your pie is browned. Our only caveat: Pyrex pieces are made from tempered glass rather than borosilicate glass, so this plate is less resistant to thermal shock than the OXO—meaning it’s more likely to shatter from sudden changes in temperature. That said, tempered glass is less likely to break if you drop it, and it can easily last for years if you’re careful not to move the dish directly from the freezer into a hot oven.

If you like to bake pies even just once or twice a year, having a pie plate in your kitchen is worth it. Sure, you have ways to get around using one—making a slab pie or galette on a baking sheet, for instance, or just using a disposable aluminum tin. But you can’t make things like deep-dish fruit pies or towering lemon meringue pies on a baking sheet. And although a disposable tin can bake evenly, it’s flimsy and small, and it doesn’t look so nice on the table. Plus, a good pie plate can come in handy for more than just sweets: If the dish is deep enough, you can use it to make things like frittatas and pot pies. You can also use it for recipes associated with specialty tart or springform pans, such as quiche and cheesecake.

If you have a pie plate you like, one that is durable and has served you well, keep it. But if you can’t seem to achieve golden crusts or evenly cooked filling, you may want to upgrade to a better plate. A high-quality pie plate can survive many years of use, so whether you’re an experienced baker or an occasional one, a good plate is worth the investment (though you shouldn’t have to invest too much).

Through high school, college, and culinary school, Daniela Galarza worked in bakeries and restaurant pastry kitchens, where she baked thousands of pies. She has made every type of pie dough and filling, and has used pie dishes of all sizes, shapes, and styles. Marguerite Preston, who worked on a previous version of this guide, is a former professional baker with almost two decades of pie making under her belt. She’s now a senior editor overseeing Wirecutter’s kitchen and appliance coverage. This guide also builds on work by Wirecutter deputy editor Christine Cyr Clisset.

To ensure we weren’t limited to our own experiences, for our 2019 update we reached out to some of the best in the pie-making business, including third-generation pie baker Petra Paredez of Petee’s Pie Company in New York City; Melissa Clark, longtime food columnist for The New York Times, who has written a guide to pie crust (and many pie recipes); pastry chef and recipe developer Erin McDowell, author of The Fearless Baker and The Book of Pie: Everything You Need to Know to Bake the Perfect Pies; Jerrelle Guy, photographer, recipe developer, and author of Black Girl Baking; and Nicole Rucker, a pastry chef and pie baker in Los Angeles whose new book, Dappled, includes a section on pie. In the past we’ve also spoken to a number of other cookbook authors and pie experts.

To round out our research, we also read reviews of pie plates from a number of other publications, including Serious Eats, Epicurious, Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, Cook’s Illustrated, and Martha Stewart Living.

A selection of pies baked during testing.
A great pie plate should work for every type of pie. Photo: Sarah Kobos

“With proper technique, any style of pie plate can achieve ideal results; you just have to know what to look for,” Erin McDowell told us, echoing comments that all of our experts made. But with a great pie plate, you should be able to get great results without having to babysit your pie. Most important, a great pie plate should conduct heat evenly (something we tested for). But there are a number of other factors we considered when deciding which plates to test:

Size

We decided to focus on pie plates between 9 and 10 inches in diameter, which is the most common size and also the one most pie recipes call for. We found that dishes measuring 9 inches in diameter from the inner edges are just the right size for most crust recipes, but manufacturers aren’t always clear about whether the advertised dimensions include the width of the rim, which is why we also looked at some larger plates.

The depth of a plate can dramatically affect its capacity, but we found that dishes between about 1½ and 2 inches deep, with a capacity around 4 to 6 cups, could fit most standard pie recipes. You’ll see some plates described by their manufacturer as “deep dish,” but we found that there’s no agreed-upon definition for what differentiates a standard-size pie plate from a deep-dish one, so it’s better to pay attention to dimensions. We considered anything 2 inches or deeper to be deep dish.

Choosing between a deeper plate and a shallower one is a matter of personal preference; we like and recommend both types for different reasons. Shallower dishes are great if you like more crust and less fruit, and they’re a better size for cream pies and graham cracker crusts. Deep-dish plates are good if you like a towering slice of fruit pie. But as long as you don’t go too shallow (an inch or less) or too deep (over 2 inches), you should be able to make most pies in either style of plate—you just need to pile the fruit a little higher in a shallower plate.

Shape

Even among plates of similar dimensions, we found a lot of variation in shape, from the slope of the sides to the width and design of the rim. We favored classic-looking plates with gently sloped sides that would help prevent a crust from slumping, as well as a wide rim, flat or slightly wavy. Without a rim that’s sufficiently wide—at least ½ inch—pie crusts tend to slip into the pan. A wider rim also helps give you a better grasp when you’re moving the dish to and from the oven. And having a relatively flat rim makes it easier to shape a pretty fluted or otherwise decorative crust. We found that a gently rippled rim (which is meant to help you shape a fluted crust) didn’t get in the way of creative crust designs, but dramatically wavy rims did.

Material

Glass, ceramic, and metal pie plates can all produce evenly baked pies, so we tested dishes in all three materials. But within those broad categories of material, we ruled out a few specific qualities:

  • We avoided metal plates with a nonstick coating because we don’t think it’s practical for long-term use. You’ll almost always want to cut your pie in the pan, and that would inevitably scratch a nonstick coating, causing it to lose effectiveness or flake off over time.
  • We also dismissed cast-iron pie plates because they’re heavy, they can’t go in the dishwasher, and they require extra care to maintain their seasoning. Instead we focused on lightweight aluminum or steel plates.
  • We’ve seen a couple of unglazed ceramic pie plates, though they’re not very common. These are supposed to yield a crisper crust by absorbing, rather than trapping, moisture. But we don’t think they’re practical for most people since they stain easily and usually require hand washing without soap (which the porous material can absorb).

After testing pie plates made from glass, glazed ceramic, aluminum, and steel, we don’t think one material is definitively better than the others. Each one comes with different pros and cons:

Clear glass pie plates conduct heat gently and evenly, and they offer the unique advantage of allowing you to see whether the bottom of your pie is fully cooked and browned. They’re usually inexpensive, and while they’re not the most beautiful option you can get, they’re not bad looking, either. The big downside of glass is that it breaks.

All the glass pie plates we’ve found are made of tempered glass or borosilicate glass, which are both stronger than plain soda lime glass but in different ways. Tempered glass will usually resist breaking if you drop it. But when it does break, it shatters into hundreds of small pieces, which can be both alarming and messy (you can read more about the science behind tempered glass in here). Sudden changes in temperature can also cause tempered glass to shatter unexpectedly, leading to occasional reports of oven disasters (and sometimes injury) from people who put their dish directly from the freezer into the oven, against manufacturer instructions. Borosilicate glass is more resistant to breaking from such thermal shock, and therefore the safest for baking with. But it’s more brittle than tempered glass and thus more likely to break if you drop it (though it breaks into fewer, larger pieces than tempered glass). If you’d like to learn more, we’ve covered the differences between types of glass, and the ways to bake with them safely, in a lot more detail in a separate piece. Ultimately, we think the risk of any glass bakeware shattering unexpectedly is low if you use it correctly.

Glazed ceramic pie plates look a bit nicer than plain glass dishes and distribute heat gently and evenly. But ceramic plates vary more in thickness and density than glass plates, and in our tests some ceramic dishes took longer to fully bake a pie; in most cases the difference was only a few minutes, but one ½-inch-thick stoneware plate took a full 20 minutes longer than any glass plate to bake. We recommend avoiding anything that thick and heavy.

Like glass plates, ceramic dishes can break if you drop them, and they may crack when subjected to extreme temperature changes. But unlike glass dishes, some ceramic plates we tested were safe to go under the broiler, useful for browning meringue on top of a pie.

Metal pie plates, whether aluminum or steel, conduct heat more efficiently than plates made from glass or ceramic, which can help yield a crisp crust, but they may be more likely to overcook a particularly long-baking pie, such as a juicy deep-dish fruit pie. They won’t shatter if you drop them or subject them to extreme temperature changes, but flimsier ones may dent or warp. Bare-metal pie plates (the only kind we tested) can be sticky and harder to clean than glass or ceramic dishes.

A pie baked in a clear glass pie plate.
We looked for plates that could bake a juicy peach pie without producing a soggy bottom crust. Photo: Sarah Kobos

We’ve tested 19 different pie plates since 2013, including nine new ones (against our previous two picks) for our 2019 update. Though the specifics have varied slightly over the years (for example, we went from making apple pie to making peach pie), we’ve largely conducted the same set of tests each time.

For our 2019 tests, we did all our baking in one of two identical ovens, each outfitted with an oven thermometer to confirm that it reached the correct temperature. We started by blind baking a store-bought, frozen pie crust in each pie plate. Since mass-produced crusts are more consistent than any homemade dough, this test allowed us to quickly judge how evenly each plate distributed heat. We chilled the crusts in the pan before baking, pierced them with a fork, and weighed them down with dried beans to prevent the sides from slumping or the bottom from puffing. After baking, we popped each crust out of the pan to see how evenly it had browned on the bottom.

We then performed the same blind baking test with homemade, all-butter pie dough (using Erin McDowell’s Perfect Pie Crust recipe) to learn how evenly each dish could bake a more finicky, less consistent dough.

To determine how each plate handled a custard filling, which requires a gentle distribution of heat to prevent the delicate custard from curdling or cracking, we prepared a pumpkin pie using homemade crust and the classic Libby’s recipe from the can. We noted whether the pies baked within the time the recipe specified, we checked the bottom of each for undercooked spots, and we tasted the results.

Finally, we made peach pies (using frozen peaches) to see how each plate handled a thick fruit pie, which can easily turn soggy and needs a long time in the oven—at least an hour—for the fruit juices to gel. We again noted how long each pie took to bake and whether it was within the range the recipe gave. Once the pies were cool enough to handle, we flipped each one out of the pan to check for underbaked patches. Making peach pies also helped us test each plate’s ability to handle extreme temperature fluctuations, since we chilled the bottom crust in the freezer for an hour before filling it, adding a top crust, putting it on a baking sheet, and immediately placing it in an oven set to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. Although this test went against manufacturer instructions in some cases, none of the plates broke, likely because the baking sheet prevented direct contact between the cold plate and the hot oven rack.

Between tests we washed each pie plate by hand to see if any were particularly hard to scrub, and we noted any discoloration, scratches, dents, cracks, or warping. We also measured each pan’s width, height, interior depth, and thickness, and we then filled it with water to determine its capacity.

A pie baked in the OXO Good Grips Glass 9″ Pie Plate, our top pick pie plate.
Photo: Sarah Kobos

Our pick

At 2 inches deep, this dish holds more than most glass plates we tested. It’s better able to handle dramatic temperature changes such as going from freezer to oven, it bakes evenly, and it lets you easily see when the bottom of your pie is browned.

Buying Options

$15 $12 from Bloomingdale's

Price reflects in cart

The OXO Good Grips Glass 9″ Pie Plate With Lid conducts heat very well, and in our tests it baked some of the most evenly browned crusts. At 2 inches deep, it’s one of the few glass dishes we found that qualify as deep-dish plates. It fits thick fruit pies better than shallower glass plates but isn’t so deep that custard pies look skimpy. The rim is wider than most, which makes shaping a pretty crust easy, while the clear glass lets you see when your pie is done. And unlike with some other glass plates, you can transfer this one directly from freezer to oven since it’s made of borosilicate glass.

Among the 19 pie plates we’ve tested over the years, the OXO dish (along with the Emile Henry) produced some of the most evenly browned crusts. In every test crusts baked up golden from edge to edge, with no pale spots as we saw on the bottoms and sides of pies baked in other plates. The pumpkin pie we baked in the OXO plate set into a smooth custard with a few small crinkles around the edges, while the peach pie emerged jammy and juicy with a neatly crimped edge and a crisp, golden-brown crust on top and bottom. Both pies cut neatly and didn’t stick to the pan.

The bottom of a pie baked in the OXO Good Grips Glass 9″ Pie Plate, our top pick pie plate.
An empty all-butter crust baked up perfectly golden in the OXO plate. Photo: Sarah Kobos

The OXO plate measures 9 inches in diameter from inner edge to inner edge and just about 2 inches deep, with a volume of about 6¾ cups. That’s about 2¾ cups more than the similar-looking Pyrex plate (our runner-up) can hold, making the OXO better for deep-dish lovers. That said, we found that the OXO plate worked better than some other large-capacity plates for both standard recipes and those that called for deep-dish pie plates. Although the pre-rolled, store-bought crust we tested in the OXO just barely fit, the pan’s slightly larger-than-average size worked well with homemade pie crust recipes and is deep enough to fit most deep-dish filling recipes, too. In comparison, plates that were larger (such as the 7½-cup Nordic Ware aluminum pan) or wider (like the 9½-inch Pyrex Easy Grab plate) caused overstretched crusts to slump and produced custard pies that looked underfilled.

The generous ⅞-inch rim on the OXO is one of the widest among the plates we tested (only the Pyrex Easy Grab plate has a wider one). It gives you plenty of room to crimp or to add some other decorative edge to your pies, and we found that it helped crusts stay in place as they baked. The rim also makes it easier to grasp the hot pie plate with oven mitts.

The bottom of a pie baked in the OXO Good Grips Glass 9″ Pie Plate, our top pick pie plate.
We like that the plate allows you to see when the bottom crust is done. Photo: Sarah Kobos

Because the OXO pie plate is clear, you can monitor your pie’s crust as it browns in the oven—no soggy bottoms here. OXO’s dish is made from borosilicate, a thermal-shock-resistant glass that won’t shatter from the rapid expansion or contraction of the glass that happens when it goes abruptly from cold temperatures to hot or vice versa (a problem with tempered-glass Pyrex dishes that publications such as Consumer Reports have reported on). There’s nothing fancy about the OXO pie plate, but its simple design won’t clash with other servingware. It’s dishwasher safe, and easy to clean by hand. The plate also comes with a lid, which is useful for transporting pies to parties and potlucks.

This pie plate comes with OXO’s Better Guarantee, meaning OXO will replace it if it breaks under normal use due to any defects, and we’ve always found OXO’s customer service to be very good. We’ll also continue to long-term test this plate to see how it performs over time.

Although borosilicate glass is more resistant to thermal shock than tempered glass, with extreme-enough temperature changes it can still break. To understand more, we've written a blog on how and why this happens. Also, the OXO dish will almost certainly break if you drop it from a counter onto a hard floor—something that a tempered-glass plate like the Pyrex could survive. We recommend using any glass bakeware with care; read our tips in the Care and maintenance section of this guide.

We discovered that this plate was a little too big for a store-bought crust—shaping a fluted edge was a bit of a stretch. If you primarily use pre-made crusts, you’ll find that the Pyrex 9″ Glass Pie Plate is a much better fit.

A pie baked in the Emile Henry 9-Inch Pie Dish.
Photo: Sarah Kobos

Also great

Deep and sturdy, this pie plate bakes more evenly than other ceramic dishes we tested, holds up under a broiler (which glass can’t do), and comes in several elegant colors.

Though it’s pricier than other models, the Emile Henry 9-Inch Pie Dish is a worthwhile investment for anyone who wants a deep, attractive dish for serving pies. It has ranked among our top picks since we first wrote this guide in 2013, and in all our tests it has consistently browned crusts and cooked fillings more evenly than other ceramic plates. The Emile Henry is safe to transfer from freezer to oven, and it’s also the only one of our picks that’s broiler safe, which is an advantage when you want to brown the top of a meringue pie. Plus, it’s prettier than a glass plate and available in several colors.

The bottom of a pie baked in the Emile Henry 9-Inch Pie Dish.
The peach pie we baked in the Emile Henry was beautifully browned, with no sign of sogginess in the center. Photo: Sarah Kobos

All the pies we baked in the Emile Henry dish came out beautifully. Its blind-baked crusts were well browned on the bottom, whereas other, thicker, heavier ceramic plates (such as those made by Le Creuset and USA Pan) turned out paler crusts. Our pumpkin pie set perfectly, and our peach pie emerged golden and crisp from top to bottom. Although pies took a few minutes longer to bake in the Emile Henry dish than in the OXO and Pyrex plates, they were still done within the guidelines of the recipe. Thicker ceramic plates, such as the USA Pan Pie Stone, took as much as 20 minutes longer to bake and still left our pies with a soggy bottom.

The Emile Henry plate has about the same dimensions as the OXO: It’s 2 inches deep and nearly 9 inches in diameter, with a capacity of about 6½ cups (only ¼ cup less than the OXO). That means it’s big enough to hold just about any pie you want to make but not so deep that the crust falls in on itself. We also love the ¾-inch-wide, slightly wavy rim; we found that its rippled design helped us easily create a pretty fluted crust, but it won’t get in the way if you have other designs in mind.

In the past we’ve occasionally had crusts stick to the Emile Henry, possibly due to leaked fruit juices, but that hasn’t been a consistent problem. And fortunately, even when fruit juices bake onto it, we’ve found the Emile Henry pie dish to be particularly easy to clean by hand. It’s also dishwasher safe.

Like the OXO pie plate, the Emile Henry dish is designed to go safely from freezer to oven, without cracking from the stress of such a rapid temperature change. And it’s the only plate we recommend that’s safe to put under the broiler, which you may want to do occasionally in order to brown the meringue topping on a pie. The Emile Henry comes with a 10-year warranty, so if it does break under normal use, you’re covered for a good long time. That said, ceramic is of course not indestructible, and you won’t be covered if you drop the plate and it breaks.

We like the simple design of the Emile Henry, and we think it will fit into most table settings, especially since you can get the plate in multiple colors, including white. Because it’s not glass, it’s not transparent, so you’ll have to use other signs to tell when a pie is done. But in trade, you get an attractive serving piece that you could use for many dishes besides pie.

How the Emile Henry has held up

Wirecutter staff writer, Lesley Stockton, says that her Emile Henry pie plate still looks like new—no chips or cracks—after 15 years. In that time she’s baked countless fruit pies, vegetable tians, potato gratins, and shepherd's pies in this dish. Lesley notes that this pie plate is too deep for standard custard pie recipes, like pumpkin and key lime (the Pyrex is ideal for those). But the Emile Henry is her favorite for baking show-stopping double-crust apple or stone fruit pies. 

A pie baked in the Pyrex 9″ Glass Pie Plate.
Photo: Sarah Kobos

Runner-up

If you like to make cream pies or prefer extra crust, the 1½-inch-deep Pyrex is the ideal size and bakes a beautiful crust.

Buying Options

The classic Pyrex 9″ Glass Pie Plate is best for those who want a dish that’s shallower than the relatively spacious OXO and Emile Henry plates. It’s especially great for custard and cream pies, but it works well for fruit pies, too, especially if you like a higher crust-to-fruit ratio. Similar to the OXO plate, this clear, simple dish makes it easy to see when your pie is cooked on the bottom, and it blends into any table setting. It’s made from durable tempered glass, but unlike our other picks, it can’t handle extreme temperature changes, so it may shatter if you move it directly from freezer to oven.

The Pyrex pie plate has been one of our picks since 2013, and it has always baked pies well in our tests. In our 2019 tests, the peach pie we baked in the Pyrex plate wasn’t quite as evenly golden from edge to edge as the one we baked in the OXO dish, but it was still flaky and well baked, as was our pumpkin pie. As with the OXO, it helps that this dish is clear, so you can see when the bottom is browned.

The Pyrex dish has a depth of just 1½ inches and a 4-cup capacity—about 2½ cups less than the Emile Henry plate and 2¾ cups less than the OXO pie plate. The squat profile works well for custard pies and classic diner-style or icebox pies, in which the result should be a thin layer of filling topped with peaks of pillowy cream. But the limited volume means you could end up with extra filling or a very tall pie if you’re using a recipe developed for a deeper dish (common with fruit pies and some pumpkin pies). Also keep in mind that you’re not supposed to use Pyrex bakeware under a broiler, so this isn’t the best dish for something like lemon meringue pie unless you can brown your meringue with a torch (as we did for the lemon meringue pie pictured at the beginning of this section).

The Pyrex plate (right) has a smaller capacity and a narrower rim than the OXO plate (left). Photo: Sarah Kobos

The narrower, ½-inch-wide rim on the Pyrex dish gives you just enough space to shape a fluted crust, but it can be problematic when you’re taking the dish out of the oven. “Sometimes, pies baked in a standard 9-inch Pyrex are hard to get out of the oven with a puffy oven mitt, and I have to be extra careful to not crush my perfectly crimped edges or drop the pie entirely,” noted cookbook author Jerrelle Guy. But to avoid that issue, you can always place the dish on a baking sheet in the oven, which is the best option for catching drips and spills anyway.

Years ago, Consumer Reports published an article about a small percentage of Pyrex dishes shattering unexpectedly in the oven. This is a complaint we still see crop up occasionally in Amazon reviews of Pyrex bakeware, and it has to do with the fact that Pyrex dishes are made of tempered glass rather than borosilicate glass (which is what vintage Pyrex pieces and the OXO plate are made of). Although tempered glass is strengthened to resist breaking if you drop the dish, it’s not able to withstand extreme temperature changes as effectively as borosilicate glass is, and it can break if you move it too quickly from cold to hot. But we think shattering is a relatively rare occurrence for Pyrex plates if you use the dish according to its care instructions. Corelle Brands (the manufacturer of Pyrex) also promises to “replace any Pyrex glass product that breaks from oven heat” within two years of purchase.

By now, we hope you’re not totally freaked out about exploding pie plates and shattered glass. In our final round of tests we tested each pan’s ability to go from freezer to oven (sometimes against manufacturer instructions), and we didn’t have any issues. But we can’t explicitly recommend using a plate that way if the fine-print instructions that come with your plate say to avoid such extreme temperature fluctuations. You should also be careful not to put cold water in a hot plate or to set a hot plate on a cold surface.

That said, it’s hard to get around the fact that many recipes advise chilling your pie (or at least the crust) before baking. If you do want to put a cold plate in a hot oven, it’s best to place it on a room-temperature rimmed baking sheet (we like the Nordic Ware Natural Aluminum Commercial Baker’s Half Sheet) first, to avoid direct contact between the cold plate and the hot rack. We advise doing this even with plates that are supposed to be freezer-to-oven safe, such as the OXO and Emile Henry, since it will help minimize the stress you put on the dish in the long term. The baking sheet will also make taking the plate in and out of the oven easy, plus it’ll prevent any drips from messing up the bottom of your oven (cleanup will be even easier if you line the sheet pan with parchment paper).

We’re fans of Nordic Ware’s baking sheets, so we wanted to test the Nordic Ware Natural Aluminum Commercial Pie Pan. But with a 7½-cup capacity, this plate was a bit too large, and our crusts shrank away from the sides. We also found that crusts stuck to this pan, and using a butter knife to cut a slice left a deep scratch in it. On the plus side, this is a well-made pan with a wide, reinforced rim to prevent warping. If you want a metal pan, the Nordic Ware Natural Aluminum Commercial Pie Pan will get the job done, but it’s not our favorite.

The 9-inch anodized-aluminum Fat Daddio's ProSeries Pie Pan was much, much smaller than the competition—just over 8 inches in diameter from inner edge to inner edge. And even if we had sized up to the 10-inch pan, the sharply angled sides and very narrow rim would have made it difficult to shape a crust and keep it from slumping.

The proportions of the Pyrex Easy Grab 9½″ Pie Plate were unappealing. A standard store-bought crust did not fit in this pan, even when we rolled it out to be extra thin. The slope of the sides also made our butter crust slump into the pan, even though we had filled it with pie weights. More important, the finished crust was not evenly browned.

The USA Pan Stoneware Pie Dish consists of an unusual combination of thick stoneware coated with a thin layer of nonstick silicone. But because this pan is ½ inch thick—almost twice as thick as the average pie dish—our pies took around 20 extra minutes to bake. And even after that extra time, the fruit pie we baked in this dish had a soggy bottom. Plus, we noticed stains on the inside of the USA Pan Pie Stone after we washed it, as though the fat in our pie dough had seeped through the silicone.

Le Creuset’s Heritage Pie Dish, the priciest model on our list, was also a disappointing dud. A handsome pan, it had a size and shape that were conducive to pie shaping and baking, but it failed to conduct heat evenly, leaving our crusts blotchy and underbaked.

The Rose Levy Beranbaum–designed Rose’s Perfect Pie Plate tended to brown the crust a little unevenly in our tests—the center of the crust’s bottom remained lightly toasted while the edges acquired a deep, dark color. The pronounced fluted rim also limits the ways in which you can shape your crust.

The Good Cook 9-Inch Ceramic Pie Plate is highly rated by Amazon customers. In our 2014 testing, it left a soggy, uncooked circle of dough at the center of the bottom of the blueberry pie we made. We also dislike the rim, which is slightly thicker than that of the Emile Henry or the OXO and makes attempts to form nice fluting harder in comparison.

Homer Laughlin’s Fiesta 10¼-Inch Deep Dish Pie Baker is a beautiful plate that comes in the full rainbow of Fiestaware colors and has a five-year warranty. Unfortunately, in our tests it consistently left the bottom of our pies pale and doughy in the center. And as many Amazon customers point out, it isn’t as large as its label claims. The plate is only about 1½ inches deep and 9 inches in diameter at the base, and its capacity is much closer to that of the 9-inch Pyrex dish.

The Ôcuisine Borosilicate Glass Pie Dish measures only 8.65 inches across, and though the dish still held our entire pumpkin pie recipe (barely), trying to fill it with our entire fruit pie recipe caused the crust to droop over the sides while the pie was in the oven. This is a great plate if you like cute, petite pies, but be prepared to adjust many recipes accordingly.

  1. Sarah Karnasiewicz, The Best Pie Dishes, Food & Wine, July 9, 2019

  2. Sharon Franke, The Best Pie Dishes of 2019, Reviewed.com, January 2, 2019

  3. Stella Parks, How to Choose the Right Pie Pan, Serious Eats, March 4, 2019

  4. The Best Pie Plates, Cook’s Illustrated, October 1, 2017

  5. Yossy Arefi, The Best Pie Pan for Sweet Pie, Savory Pie, and Every Pie In Between, Epicurious, July 22, 2019

  6. Adrienne Blumthal, Dish Debate: Choosing the Right Pie Plate, Martha Stewart, June 25, 2014

  7. Alex Beggs, Summer Pies Should All Be Deep Dish, Bon Appétit, June 18, 2019

Meet your guides

Daniela Galarza

Marguerite Preston

Marguerite Preston is a senior editor covering kitchen gear and appliances at Wirecutter, and has written guides to baking equipment, meal kit delivery services, and more. She previously worked as an editor for Eater New York and as a freelance food writer. Before that, she learned her way around professional kitchens as a pastry cook in New York.

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