This Fluted Pie Dish Will Make Your Store
Pie season is almost upon us. From pumpkin to pecan and apple to sweet potato, pies are arguably the finest desserts the holiday has to offer. Forget the cakes and cocktails, if it doesn’t have a crust, I’m not here for it. But, when it comes to making that crust, well, I’m team store-bought and I’ve found nothing dresses up the must-have convenience item like an Emile Henry Modern Classics Fluted Pie Dish.
You can ditch the braided options and fork-tine imprints, when you’ve got an Emile Henry Fluted Pie Dish you’re already a step ahead. Not only is it prettyand a bona fide time saver due to the built-in wavy designbut it also has a few fringe benefits that have quickly made it my favorite pie dish both for prepping and creating a centerpiece-worthy dessert for my holiday table.
I’ve found one of the most important things about a good pie dish is finding one that conducts heat evenly. Emile Henry’s features Burgundy clay, a material that is safe for the broiler, microwave, and oven up to 500°F, meaning it’s a dream for leftovers , going from the oven one day to the microwave the next. It’s a 9-inch pie dish, but it has a deep, 1.7-quart capacity. You could certainly adjust the amount of filling you prepare to fill the dish, but I prefer to use recipes that call for a standard 9-inch dish, which means I avoid messy spillovers.
Why You Should Trust Us
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. Shes now a senior editor overseeing Wirecutters kitchen and appliance coverage. This guide also builds on work by Wirecutter deputy editor Christine Cyr Clisset.
To ensure we werent 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 Petees Pie Company in New York City Melissa Clark, longtime food columnist for The New York Times, who has written a guide to pie crust 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 weve also spoken to a number of other cookbook authors and pie experts.
In Search Of The Best Pie Dish
Making flaky, perfectly golden pies can be a daunting task for novice cooks and experienced bakers alike. Still, with a little patience and the right toolsstarting with a sturdy pie platebeautiful 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.
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Flaws But Not Dealbreakers
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 floorsomething 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 crustshaping a fluted edge was a bit of a stretch. If you primarily use pre-made crusts, youll find that the Pyrex 9 Glass Pie Plate is a much better fit.
Who Should Get This
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 onemaking a slab pie or galette on a baking sheet, for instance, or just using a disposable aluminum tin. But you cant make things like deep-dish fruit pies or towering lemon meringue pies on a baking sheet. And although a disposable tin can bake evenly, its flimsy and small, and it doesnt 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 cant 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 youre an experienced baker or an occasional one, a good plate is worth the investment .
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A Note About Types Of Pie Dishes
There are three main categories of pie dishes on the market today: glass, ceramic, and metal. In this test, I set out to find the best all-purpose dish for all of your pie needs. All three materials have benefits, but versatility was the name of the game here.
Glasss main draw is that you can easily monitor the bottom and sides of the pie as it is baking. Metal pans conduct heat exceptionally well and are generally thinner than glass and ceramic making them champs in the browning department. Metal pans can also be safely be transferred from the fridge or freezer to the oven with no risk of shattering like some glass and ceramic models, although thin metal dishes can warp. Ceramic dishes are beautiful and well insulated, making them a top choice for custard pies with delicate fillings, and they excel in the presentation department. They also tend to be a bit deeper than standard glass and metal dishes which can be helpful for some recipes, but not so much with others.
To find the best, I gathered eight, 9-inch pie dishes: two metal, three glass, and three ceramic and put them through their paces by baking a blueberry pie and a Key lime pie. Rest assured, there will be no soggy bottoms on my watch.
The Best Pie Plate Overall: Williams Sonoma Goldtouch Nonstick Pie Dish
This sturdy metal dish performed exceptionally well in both tests. The pies baked evenly to a perfect golden brown color and the slices were easy to remove when cool. This dish especially excelled in the berry pie test, and produced the most evenly baked and crisp crust of the bunch. Williams Sonomas site claims that the Goldtouch ceramic based coating is more durable than other non-stick surfaces. However, they do recommend using wooden or silicone tools with the dish. When I used metal tools they scratched the surface of the plate, but in the short-term the scratches didnt seem to have any negative effect on the utility of the dish. Pies still baked up golden and tasty, and the slices were easy to remove from the pan without leaving any residue behind.
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Emile Henry Fluted Ceramic Pie Dish
The beauty and performance of Emile Henry’s elegant pie dish elevates pie baking from ordinary to art as it insulates and evenly distributes heat during baking. The result – a feast for both the eyes and the palate.
- 1.5 quart capacity
- Made of all Natural Materials. High-fired Burgundy clay using Emile Henry’s HR technology
- Superior heat retention. Burgundy Clay has superior even-heat diffusion and heat retention properties it keeps food hot on the table longer.
- Resistant against temperature change. For use in the oven up to 500 Degrees F. Oven, broiler, and microwave safe: Can go directly from freezer or refrigerator, to a hot oven, to table.
- Durable and scratch resistant. Extremely hard glaze and does not craze. Durable and chip resistant for everyday use.
- Easy to clean. Dishwasher Safe or hand wash with soap and water.
Why We Love The Emile Henry Pie Dish
Our favorite pie dish, the Emile Henry, baked beautiful pies in our testing.
This ceramic plate from Emile Henry cinched the top spot in our roundup after earning high marks for form and function. The classic, glazed ceramic exterior of the pan hints at the durability and even performance we found during testing. It baked the flakiest pumpkin pie crust of the bunch and a perfectly tender graham cracker cheesecake pie base. In the apple pie test, it helped evenly brown both the top and bottom crusts.
Our tester had had nothing but praise about the dish, writing, “It bakes up beautiful pies of all types and can double as a casserole dish for scalloped potatoes and candied sweets. The 9-by-2 inch dish is able to hold almost two quarts of filling or savory dishes like mac and cheese.
Coincidentally, this is also the pie dish Ive been using since I started mixing my own dough. Ive made a peach pie with whipped cream, pumpkin pies with scorched meringue, and broccoli cheddar quiche in this pie dish.
This gorgeous pie dish can make beautiful desserts.
Aside from its performance, this pie plate is also one of the most beautiful plates Ive used. Made in France, the glazed Burgundy clay pie dish is offered in Rouge , Sugar , Twilight , Leaves , and Spring . I cant tell you how many compliments Ive received when presenting my pie within it.
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How To Choose Between A Glass Ceramic Or Metal Plate
After testing pie plates made from glass, glazed ceramic, aluminum, and steel, we dont 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. Theyre usually inexpensive, and while theyre not the most beautiful option you can get, theyre not bad looking, either. The big downside of glass is that it breaks.
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.
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Our Pick: Oxo Good Grips Glass 9 Pie Plate With Lid
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, its 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 isnt 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 its made of borosilicate glass.
Among the 19 pie plates weve tested over the years, the OXO dish 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 didnt stick to the pan.
The generous -inch rim on the OXO is one of the widest among the plates we tested . 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.
Emile Henry Modern Classics Ceramic 9 Pie Dish
The beauty and performance of Emile Henry’s iconic pie dish elevates pie baking from ordinary to art as it insulates and evenly distributes heat during baking. The result – a feast for both the eyes and the palate.
- Made in France since 1850. Made of all Natural Materials. High-fired Burgundy clay using Emile Henry’s HR technology
- Superior heat retention. Burgundy Clay has superior even-heat diffusion and heat retention properties it keeps food hot on the table longer.
- Resistant against temperature change. For use in the oven up to 500 Degrees F. Oven, broiler, and microwave safe: Can go directly from freezer or refrigerator, to a hot oven, to table.
- Durable and scratch resistant. Extremely hard glaze does not scratch and does not craze. Durable for everyday use.
- Highly resistant glaze. Ideal in the kitchen for making delicious meals and desserts.
- Easy to clean. Dishwasher Safe or hand wash with soap and water.
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