What is Reddit's opinion of Mrs. Anderson"™s Baking Pie Crust Weights, Natural Ceramic Stoneware?
From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

By popularity on Reddit, this product is:

7 reviews of this product found across Reddit:

I have 4 boxes of these and they work really well. My challenge is forming the edge now. These helped A LOT with the slump issue

It keeps the crust from bubbling up during baking. You can use a variety of weights (they even make specific pie weights) to achieve this.

Ok makes sense. Only thing I've found on Amazon are these pie weights lol

Mrs. Anderson’s Baking Ceramic Pie Crust Weights, Natural Ceramic Stoneware https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00004S1BT/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_WHi.AbM921MA5

I know it's been five days, but I know the answer to this:

It's to keep the tart crust from shrinking. A lot of times with tarts, you're baking the crust but not baking the filling, or the filling bakes faster than the crust so you pre-bake the crust (blind baking), like with this one. And with a lot of pie/tart dough recipes, they have a tendency to shrink and bubble and deform when baked when there's no filling, unless you weight them down. There are other solutions if you don't want to bother with weights, and one of them is pricking the crust with a fork prior to baking, as seen in the gif, or freezing the crust prior to baking.

I usually use this recipe and have never felt a need to use dry rice or dry beans or commercially available pie weights or what have you.