Cookery question: Bowl cracking in oven

We had scalloped potatoes with dinner tonight and, with the dish almost finished in the oven (shown by the telltale brown ring around the inside), one upper side of the bowl, in a 450 degree oven, cracked and broke off! (This was a Corning Ware white opaque bowl thal’s supposed to be oven safe.) We’ve used this bowl for a number of years and it certainly was far from the first time it’d been in the oven; could we ascribe this to age, or heat, or both?

I’ve experienced this with Corning Ware and usually when the piece is looked at afterward, there is some crazing that would indicate that there was a crack developing before the piece was used and then the expansion in the heat mixed with the crack led to breakage. I examine all non-metal cooking pieces before use now after a real mess in my oven with some corn pudding.

Probably. If it’s already chipped, a chipped windshield. You get into your super hot, baking-all-day-in-the-sun car and crank the AC. That drastic change in the temperature send that chip into full-on crack. It’s the same principle. There probably was a chip in it and it just fully fractured.

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