St George ovens are crap

It's a good thing Trev and Angela are out of the Kleenmaid business. Otherwise, I would have been ranting down the phone line at them yesterday. We have a very flash St George oven and hotplate in our place. Until yesterday, it had been the best pizza oven that I have yet seen. According to the temperature thingy, it gets up to 260 degrees. I can believe that, for if you open the door at that temp, it will almost take your eyebrows off.

Until yesterday. We had the Deputy Mayor and his family over for lunch and a few bottles of wine, and the bloody oven refused to do its thing. It wasn't on the blink - it just decided for a few crucial hours (around lunchtime) to not get hot. It's never done that before - you normally just turn it on, twist the dial to whatever temp you want, and away it goes - simple as can be. But for some reason, yesterday it was as cantakerous as a goat with a headache.

The first two pizzas were of course complete crap. I had to resort to trying to finish them under the grill (at least that was working), but it meant that the top was super crisp (almost burnt) and the bottom was completely uncooked and soggy. A good way to end up with a case of the trots.

By the time I got to pizza number 3, the gremlins had packed their bags and gone home, and I was able to produce something edible.

The gas oven at the last place was not that accurate when it came to setting a temperature, but at least you knew that if you lit the flame and cranked the knob around to 11, it would get pretty hot - unless the gas ran out. I think this St George oven has too many settings - too bloody fiddly. It's too easy for someone to press a button and before you know it, your pizza is being cooked on a "defrost" setting.

When I go oven shopping, I want something that has three settings - simmer, normal and bloody hot. I don't need the dial to say 160 degrees or 210 degrees - I just need those 3 settings. Anything else is a waste of time.

Next time we have guests, I am going to stock the freezer with frozen pies. At least we can nuke them up if the oven goes guts-up again.