Stray Foods

I have discovered that, despite Mark Bittman's proffered advice, pizza dough really does need to use bread flour instead of all-purpose.  One "slight" change, and all of a sudden the dough looks like real pizza dough.

On the other hand, I'm still not getting the final result quite right.  It's not browning and crisping the way that I'd like it to.  I think I'm going to have to throw out one more instruction, and just heat the oven as hot as it will possibly go (probably somewhere around 500, I haven't measured it), wait a fair bit longer after the temp sensor clicks off to make sure that the pizza stone is completely and thoroughly heated, and just (as Alton Brown used to say) "put the spurs to 'er."  That might do the trick.

And, as a small additional note, there's a rumor going around that the price of Nutella may be going up in the near future.  Well, it appears that some of the domestic manufacturers are trying to get in on the action, and thus Jif Brand Chocolate flavored Hazelnut spread has appeared on our grocery shelves.

You wouldn't think that you could screw up a combination of hazelnut and chocolate, would you?  And yet, somehow they did.  I strongly disagree with this Examiner article's conclusion--they do not taste at all alike, and the Jif product is clearly inferior.  My advice?  Pay more for the original-- it's worth it.