I love baking. Cakes, cookies, muffins, brownies, and even breads. I’ve tried my hand at baking them all. One of my family’s favorites is a three-layer carrot cake that usually takes the better part of a day to make (so worth it), but pies have always been a foreign, scary baked good to me.
In This Article
Glass Pie Pan Results • Ceramic Pie Pan Results • Single-Use Aluminum Pie Pan Results • Steel Pie Pan Results • How We Tested Each Pie Pan • The Bottom Line
Something about the fragility of a flaky pie crust and the nightmare of trying to extract a neat, unbroken slice from the pie pan kept me from trying to bake one. So I thought, what better time to start baking pies than for a pie pan material bake-off ahead of the holidays?
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I prepared pies in ceramic, glass, aluminized steel, and aluminum pie pans to see which one would help us bake the best golden, flaky crust pie. Keep in mind that in addition to the type of pie pan used, other factors like the type of dough, type of oven, the oven rack on which the pie is baked, and whether you bake it on a sheet pan or not can affect your baking results.
All of the pans I tested ranged in size from 9 to 10 inches and accommodated the premade refrigerated pie crusts I used. I baked each pie directly on the rack in the middle of a conventional oven, not on a sheet pan. After a full day of baking and tasting (lucky me), the best type of pie pan to use for the holidays was pretty clear.
Here’s how each pie turned out.
Glass Pie Pan
This glass pie pan from Pyrex took the cake (read: pie) in my bake-off, baking the best-tasting and best-looking pie of the four pans I tried. It’s also the second least expensive model.
Baking results: The edges on the top crust of the pie were golden and flaky. The rest of the top crust was not as evenly browned as I’d hoped it would be, but a bit more so than the ceramic and aluminized steel pie pans. When I sliced into the pie, the filling held together well, something that was not the case for a few of the other pans. The bottom crust had the crispiest texture, with the flakiest part of the crust along the edges. Toward the center of the pie, there was some sogginess, but it was the least so of the four pies. Overall, if I had to choose a pie to eat again, it would be this one, especially that yummy, flaky crust.
Ease of use: Getting this pan into and out of the oven was a breeze, thanks to its extra wide rim. Even empty, it is noticeably heavier than the aluminum and steel pans, but not as heavy as the ceramic dish. I trekked through the subway and Metro North trains with this pie pan wrapped in nothing but hope and found that it made it to my destination with zero scratches.
Durability and cleaning: After aggressively running a knife along the surface, there were no marks etched on the glass. Washing some of the sticky strawberry filling from the fluted edges took some extra attention, because the filling became stuck in some of the grooves. None of the crust stuck to the edges or the bottom of the pan.
Ceramic Pie Pan
The evaluation of the Farberware Baker’s Advantage Ceramic Pie Dish started off a little rocky. The dish arrived damaged in the mail even though it was packaged in what I thought was a pretty secure box. A replacement we ordered fared better, arriving in pristine condition and making it through my hour-long commute from Queens to CR’s Yonkers, N.Y., headquarters in one piece.
Baking results: The pie baked in this dish had a lovely golden, flaky top crust along the edges. The center of the pie crust was another story. The color on the crust was uneven, and when I took a bite from a slice, I confirmed my suspicions—the crust wasn’t flaky in the center. After taking a look at the bottom crust, I found the same thing. It was soggy in the center, with a crispy, golden look just along the edges. Nothing a few extra minutes in the oven couldn’t fix, but definitely not the best slice of pie in my bake-off.
Ease of use: The first thing I noticed even before unpacking it from the shipping box was the weight of this pie pan. Because of the ceramic material, it is heavy. I appreciated the weight before I started baking because it made the dish feel secure in my hands (something the aluminum pie pan could’ve seriously used), but after I had filled it with two cans of strawberry pie filling and baked it, I struggled to get the pie pan in and out of the hot oven. It didn’t help that the dish has no handles and the edges aren’t wide enough to get a good grip. It was when taking this pie pan out of the oven that I suffered my first and only casualty in my pie baking—a burn on my left forearm that also made me shift the position of the pie pan just enough to make the top crust rip in half down the center. Had I baked my pies on a sheet pan like many bakers do to catch any of the filling that bubbles over the edge, I likely would not have had this issue, but I chose to bake the pies right on the oven rack to better assess each pan’s ease of use.
Durability and cleaning: I sliced the rest of the pie and removed it from the pie dish to find that there were a few bits of crust stuck to the bottom and sides of the pie pan. Hand-washing with dish soap and warm water wasn’t difficult, but the stuck-on bits did require a little extra elbow grease to loosen up. Scratching the interior of the ceramic pie dish with a knife left no visible marks on the material but did chip away some of the color on the exterior of the dish.
Photo: Consumer Reports Photo: Consumer Reports
Single-Use Aluminum Pie Pan
This aluminum pie pan was the least expensive at about a dollar for each pan, but it was also my least favorite pie pan to try.
Baking results: At first glance, this pie looked pretty beautiful. The crust had an even color along the top, and the edges were brown and flaky. When I cut into the pie, I found the bottom crust to be completely soggy (no flaky edges here), and even the top crust that seemed to be flaky hid a layer of soggy, undercooked dough underneath. As I continued to cut more slices, the pie filling seemed to melt right out of the crust, leaving unappealing, messy slices in its wake. A longer bake time could have remedied this pan’s undercooking issue, but I chose to bake all of the pies for a standard 45 minutes for a fair comparison across pie pan materials. Altogether, a hard pass from me on this one.
Ease of use: I could fit only a can and a half of pie filling into this pie pan, and even then it was difficult to get it out of the oven when it was hot. The bottom is not sturdy, so every time I lifted the pan out of the oven (which I couldn’t do from the sides because the edges were not wide enough to hold), I risked dropping the entire pie.
Durability and cleaning: These pans are not meant to be reused, which is convenient if you want to cut back on the number of dishes you have to wash after a big meal. Scratching the pan with a knife with some pressure caused holes in the surface, so you’ll want to be careful when you’re cutting a pie into slices so that you don’t poke a hole in the bottom of the pan. For easier transport, you could double up on the aluminum pie pan after you remove the pie from the oven.
Steel Pie Pan
Lightweight and easy to move from oven to kitchen counter, this aluminized steel pie pan from USA Pan is the runner-up to the winning glass material, above.
Baking results: The top crust on this pie had the most even browning but did have the same layer of soggy crust in the center under the flaky crust that I noticed in the aluminum pie pan. Slices cut from this pan were a bit underwhelming, falling apart as I moved them from pan to plate, even though the bottom crust was flaky and cooked through (other than the very center with the sogginess I expected at this point). Because of the mostly cooked bottom crust that was crisp and flaky, even with the messy slices, I’d give this pie pan another try at home.
Ease of use: The rim on this pan was wide enough for me to comfortably grasp without sticking my oven mitt into the pie. I had no problems moving it into and out of the oven, and the sturdiness of the material was a marked improvement over the flimsy aluminum pan I tested.
Durability and cleaning: A quick rinse with water got most of the sticky pie filling off, and a light scrub with a sponge finished the job. Unfortunately, it was the only one of the reusable options to have noticeable marks inside the pan after I scratched it with a knife.
How We Tested Each Pie Pan
I baked a pie in each pan using store-bought, refrigerated pie dough from Pillsbury and canned strawberry pie filling (according to my Instacart shopper, my local ShopRite was all out of the canned apple pie filling I requested). To the top of each pie crust, I etched four lines and a cross in the center to allow for proper venting. Each pie was baked for 45 minutes at 425° F in a conventional oven. After the first 20 minutes, I covered the edges of the pie with aluminum foil to prevent burning and allowed the pies to cool on a rack for 2 hours before cutting into them as suggested on the label of the pie crust dough. I considered the doneness of the top crust and the flakiness of the edges, and looked for any sogginess or sticking on the bottom crust. I tasted each pie and washed each pan by hand to assess ease of cleaning. Finally, I ran a knife along the inside of each pan to see how easily it could be scratched.
Photo: Consumer Reports Photo: Consumer Reports
The Bottom Line
Glass pie pans are the way to go for the best pies, but it doesn’t mean you can’t bake pies in ceramic, steel, or aluminum pans, too. It just might take a little longer to get the flakiest crust in these other types of pans. If you’re using a disposable aluminum pan, wrapping the top of the pie in aluminum foil might prevent the top of the pie from browning before the bottom crust is done. As for me, I’ll stick with a glass pie pan and maybe even give a pie dough from scratch a try this season.
Jodhaira Rodriguez
Jodhaira Rodriguez is a multimedia content creator at Consumer Reports. Before joining CR, she tested and wrote about cleaning and organizing products and major appliances like washing machines and dishwashers at Good Housekeeping. In her free time, you’ll find her reading, listening to true crime podcasts, or working on her latest hobby of the month.
