CSN Giveaway, Review and Pizza

So before I get on to the giveaway, here's how I found my experience with CSN. There was a lot of choice on the website, a lot of the stuff was more expensive than I would want to pay for kitchen stuff but it was high quality brands like Le Creuset.. Tempted as I was to go for something like that I decided to be practical and get stuff I felt I might get more use out of. After long deliberations I chose a pizza stone and some kitchen scales.






I've been after a pizza stone for so long and my old kitchen scales were horrendous and totally inaccurate. When I got to the checkout I was a bit miffed at first. It looked like they had added VAT and postage. On a second look I realised the VAT was just showing the amount in the price of the items which went on VAT oops! And the postage was under a fiver so can't really complain about that. The goods arrived pretty promptly too.

What better way to review the items than to use the scales to weigh out some pizza dough... I scribbled down a recipe I found online...




I like the scales, they seem really accurate, I weighed out a few other bits to test them out a bit more. Far better than my last set! They had a function which meant you can zero the scale at any time so no maths needed haha!

To try out the pizza stone I set out to make a few bases and cook 2 on the stone and one on a baking tray to compare them..

The dough pre-kneading

Post kneading, much smoother

Let it rise for 90 minutes

Knock the air out

Stretched out into a vague circle..

I made one with a (never home)maker inspired stuffed crust..

Mushrooms, sweetcorn and cheese

Mushroom with goat cheese and spinach

And mushroom, sweetcorn and cheese without a stuffed crust.

The above pizza after being cooked

No pictures of the other pizzas as I left Mike in charge while I was at work and he burnt them... He claims it was my instruction at fault.. I beg to differ ;-)

I liked the pizza stone.. My only problem with it was I found it difficult to transfer the prepped pizza onto the stone, I think next time I won't heat the stone first I'll just prep it on the stone and see how that goes.

Well, you've made it this far! Now the giveaway. One lucky person can win a £20 gift voucher to spend online in one of CSN's stores. Call it my way of saying happy Christmas to all my wonderful readers. I appreciate every single one of you and love reading your comments and blogs.

There are five ways to enter the contest, you get an entry for each. Be sure to post a separate comment for each too.

1. Follow my blog
2. Post about the giveaway including a link to this blog post on your blog/twitter/facebook one entry for everything you do, post a separate comment for each.
   
3. Bonus entry if you commented on my last post, 9 of you did
4. Follow me on Twitter (or let me know you already do) @boxruneat
5. Join me on Facebook (or let me know you're already there)

This giveaway is open to UK, USA, Canadian and German readers. Enjoy!

P.s. even though the snow seems to be melting I couldn't help but share one more snow photo..

Good luck in the giveaway!

p.p.s... I forgot to say the giveaway closes on 15/12/10 and I will pick a winner with a random number generator.