Is It Better to Bake in Glass or Metal? (2024)

FAQs

Is It Better to Bake in Glass or Metal? ›

– but metal does an overall better job than glass of baking almost everything except for acidic desserts. It bakes evenly because it heats up so quickly. It also browns beautifully and crisps to perfection.

Most desserts like brownies, cookies, bars, and cakes bake best in a metal dish. The metal conducts heat evenly and efficiently, allowing the baked goods to heat and rise equally from edge to center, cooking at the same rate.

The standard advice for baking in glass is to lower the oven temperature by 25°F from what the recipe calls for, and bake up to 10 minutes longer. The hard edges we see here are more pronounced in high-sugar, high-fat recipes; your casserole or bread pudding are less likely to be adversely affected.

Save your glass pans for lasagna, plátanos maduros horneados, baked eggs, piñon, casseroles, and doughnut bread pudding—they're easy to clean, they're so smooth they're naturally nonstick, they'll keep your kugel warm as it sits on the table, they won't cause discoloration or off-tastes when you're slow-roasting ...

If you make brownies or bake often, consider using or purchasing a metal pan to use in place of your Pyrex dish. Metal pans, specifically aluminum, absorb and transfer heat more consistently than glass, making them perfect for delicious, evenly-cooked, moist brownies every time.

Is a Glass or Metal Pan Better for Baking? Since aluminum baking pans conduct heat more quickly and are easier to wash, store, and care for, I prefer them for baking in most circ*mstances. In fact, using glass or even ceramic baking pans for certain recipes, such as brownies or banana bread, may create adverse results!

Metal pans are great conductors of heat; in other words, they heat up quickly, but in turn, they also cool down more rapidly once removed from the heat source. Additionally, metal pans can withstand higher temperatures than glass.

Bakes more quickly than metal: If you need to substitute a glass pan for a metal one, you will need to decrease the oven temperature by about 25 degrees to ensure that your baked good does not bake too quickly and burn.

Another common temperature mistake cooks make with glass also involves temperature variations. Cookware will experience thermal shock when it rapidly changes temperature. This shock will make metal warp and glass crack. Obviously, having cracked glass near freshly cooked food is an undesirable outcome for any cook.

Where glass insulates heat, metal is a well-known heat conductor. Consequently, metal baking sheets are optimal for high-heat recipes like roasted potatoes because they will effectively and efficiently transfer the high heat evenly, resulting in those desirably crispy-edged potatoes.

Should you bake lasagna covered or uncovered? ›

Cover the baking dish with aluminum foil. Bake in the preheated oven for 30 to 40 minutes. Remove the foil and bake until cheese is golden brown, 5 to 10 more minutes. Remove from the oven and let stand for 10 minutes before cutting and serving.

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.

“Cakes should definitely go in metal,” Chang says. As you can see in the photo, the slower transfer of heat to the batter means cakes baked in glass (or ceramic) will take longer to cook than those in metal (5 to 8 minutes longer, according to a test with yellow cake done by Cook's Illustrated).

Our Top Pick: Emile Henry Modern Classics Rectangular Baker

But it goes beyond aesthetics—the dish is great for all sorts of culinary adventures and can go everywhere in your kitchen from the oven to the broiler to the freezer. It's dishwasher and microwave-safe too.

A dark metal pan absorbs and distributes heat more quickly and thoroughly than lighter-colored pans. So not only does your cake bake more quickly in a dark pan, its crust can potentially burn (or at least brown unpleasantly) due to over-exposure to oven heat.

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.

Baking pans are frequently made from aluminum (an excellent heat conductor), or an aluminum-steel combination. Less common are stainless steel pans; while easy to clean and non-reactive, they don't conduct heat as well as aluminum.