Did you know that when you put a screaming hot Pyrex dish on a wet counter top, it EXPLODES!??
Here are some fun pics of shattered Pyrex dishes that I found on the information superhighway:
How often does this happen? I have never experienced the phenomenon, but a quick search indicates that it is not uncommon.
The two biggest makers of glass bakeware are Pyrex and Anchor Hocking. Apparently, all glass bakeware used to be made with borosilicate. At some point the makers switched to soda lime glass, which is cheaper and looks the same but is apparently weaker. Pyrex claims that soda lime glass is just as strong and maybe stronger than borosilicate glass, but it seems that everyone else disagrees.
Consumer Reports recently published a year long study after testing different types of glass bakeware and the results are striking. European glass bakeware is still made of borosilicate, which was proven to be significantly stronger than soda lime glass. Also, the change in American glass recipes occurred at some point in the late 80’s or 90’s, so old glass bakeware inherited from mom or grandma is solid.
Check out this short video make by Consumer Reports. There is really cool footage of their experiments comparing new American bakeware vs. old American bakeware vs. new European bakeware. The message is clear and there are lots of explosions.
How awful would it be to have a Pyrex dish full of extremely hot food explode violently in your kitchen? Flying shards of glass and hot liquid… dang. Pretty scary.
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