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I had a cabinet that held glass and ceramic bakeware that fell off the wall.

Some dishes broke and are garbage. Some did not break or have no cracks.

Are the unbroken dishes safe to use as bakeware? Or should they be used only for leftover storage, like tupperware?

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  • If a flake has broken off from an edge and left it sharp, but the vessel is otherwise usable, you can use carborundum (silicon carbide) or a ruby or diamond abrasive to smooth it. Commented Nov 10, 2024 at 16:21

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If they are not broken/cracked/chipped, they are fine. Glass/Ceramics either break, or don't.

If you're feeling paranoid about missing a crack, put them in the oven and bake at 350°F/175°C for an hour. Anything you missed should be revealed by the stresses associated with thermal cycling. If you do that once without food in them you won't lose any food you happened to be cooking if one fails from a flaw you didn't notice at first.

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    If you do this, let them cool in the oven. Other ways of cooling them may crack them even if they were fine before. Commented Nov 9, 2024 at 15:41
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    I would treat them largely the same as if cooking in them. Not trying to stress them any more, nor any less. So I'm not suggesting whipping them out of a hot oven and dumping ice or cold water in them, but I expect a casserole dish to be able to be removed from a hot oven and placed on an insulated pad on the countertop, for instance, as I'd do when removing a cooked dish from the oven to serve it. Commented Nov 9, 2024 at 19:53
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    @crip659 It’s unlikely that the impact would have damaged them meaningfully, but in the very unlikely case that it has done so in a truly non-visible way, thermal cycling will usually cause enough stress to make that damage obvious. And it is indeed much better to find it out before you try cooking food in them instead of while cooking food in them. Commented Nov 9, 2024 at 21:28
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    @PeterCordes For anything other than particularly wet stuff (like lasagna) it will usually be more than just ‘a bit hotter’. If this wasn’t the case, then there would be no issue using standard glass in the oven, and you also would not get any appreciable degree of browning for the parts of the food in contact with the cookware (because you don’t get carmelization or the Maillard reaction to any useful degree below about 120 C). Commented Nov 10, 2024 at 3:55
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    @Ecnerwal When you're cooking with it though, the food can act as thermal ballast to slow the temperature changes when you take it out of the oven. So heating it up to standard cooking temperatures and taking it out empty is very much a "worst case" scenario. Of course, if it can stand that then it's probably still fine. Commented Nov 10, 2024 at 16:41

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