Handy Cooking Tips

My four-year-old and I watch cooking shows nearly every day. If we had cable, we'd watch the Food Network, but as it is we stick to PBS and whatever the local stations offer.

Today on America's Test Kitchens we learned the following:

1. The best way to bake a pizza is on a pizza stone, preferably a large rectangular one that is completely flat (no lip like a tray), preheated with the oven. If you're going to buy a pizza stone, make sure you measure the interior of your oven first, as it can be a great deal smaller than the exterior. You don't want to get a stone that six whole inches too wide.
2. The best pizza cutter is the ten dollar one with the four-inch cutting wheel. The small-wheeled ones are only good for thin crust, the pie-slicer ones are messy, and the long rectangular cutter (used in pizza restaurants) is good but too big and bulky, a pain in the butt to store.
3. Bread flour is best for pizza crust.
4. Olive oil is, indeed, man's other best friend.
5. Chefs like weird stuff on their pizzas. (Seriously, carmelized onions, olives, and anchovies? Where's the cheese? Where's the tomato sauce?!)
6. California black olives are dyed black! Ewwww!