
Cooking with Glass: How Pyrex Transformed Every Kitchen into a Home-Ec Lab - zipop
http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/how-pyrex-transformed-every-kitchen/
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mturmon
This reads as a bit of a love letter to Corning Glass. If you're ever in
upstate NY, the Corning Glass museum (in Corning, naturally) is perfectly
worth visiting. They have ancient glass from Egypt, and a copy of the huge
200-inch glass mirror that they made for Palomar Observatory, among other
trinkets.

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DanBC
On a tangent, here's a youtube clip of cleaning and re-coating an 8 metre
mirror.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkV8RRRu7gE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkV8RRRu7gE)

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js2
Pyrex sold in the U.S. today is tempered glass, not borosilcate. I only
skimmed the article but I didn't see that mentioned.

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DiabloD3
Specifically, they switched to a Corning-designed soda lime glass that has
much better shatter resistance, but less thermal shock resistance.

However, I don't care what Pyrex consumer products say, either back when it
was ran directly by Corning, or when they spun World Kitchen off, putting a
fridge cold borosilicate or soda lime Pyrex product into an oven risks blowing
it up, as does taking an oven hot dish and putting it on anything other than a
wire cooling rack or a pot holder.

Just don't do it.

Fridge cold into the microwave, however, is fine, as there is no instant
thermal shock there.

That said, I have Pyrex older than I am that is borosilicate, stuff that's a
bit newer, and then stuff I've bought that is the new soda lime. People act as
if the soda lime glass is shit, and it's not: it is the same high quality
Pyrex products we've always enjoyed.

As a warning: do not buy Anchor Hocking's knock off for any sort of heated
cooking. I don't care what they say, their shit will happily blow up; I know
two people who this has happened to, and the Internet is full of bad reviews
over this. Anchor Hocking glass products are fine for kitchen storage,
however, just never cook with them.

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slacka
> as does taking an oven hot dish and putting it on anything other than a wire
> cooling rack

I can attest to this. I learned this lesson the hard way when I took a lasagna
dish out of the oven and put it on a marble marble cutting board. The Pyrex
dish literately exploded on my counter top.

Consumer Reports has investigated this:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyhdMa1ikKM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyhdMa1ikKM)

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MichaelMoser123
Another interesting book on material science is

'Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made
World' by Mark Miodownik [http://www.amazon.com/Stuff-Matters-Exploring-
Marvelous-Mate...](http://www.amazon.com/Stuff-Matters-Exploring-Marvelous-
Materials/dp/0544236041)

actually here is a sample chapter

[http://www.hmhco.com/~/media/sites/home/educators/webinars/s...](http://www.hmhco.com/~/media/sites/home/educators/webinars/summer-
session/stuffmatters.pdf)

The author has also an interesting lecture on youtube
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEWFJiMK6CE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEWFJiMK6CE)

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pcunite
From the link below, the older borosilicate is safer.

[https://youtu.be/UyhdMa1ikKM](https://youtu.be/UyhdMa1ikKM)

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Animats
The borosilicate glass items Consumer Reports liked are now available in the
US, imported from France, and they're no more expensive than the Pyrex-in-
name-only stuff. The Consumer Reports article lists for $29 an item that Bed,
Bath and Beyond now sells for $10. Search for "borosilicate" and whatever
cookery item you want.

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rdl
I'd be interested in similar articles about Schott glass. They make probably
the world's finest optical glass.

