I recently bought a new mixer -- KitchenAid Pro 600 series. It only took me 4 years, 1
practice purchase and return (documented in my YouTube video from 3 year ago), and a viewer
survey with over 300 responses to make this little purchasing decision. I know there are
support groups for impulsive shoppers. Are there support groups for indecisive shoppers?
Let me know, cause I’ll sign up. I have since used the mixer for 6 months and I am
finally ready to give you my review.
This is sort of a long story, so if you want to jump to a particular topic, time stamps
are in the description below.
The mixer you’ve seen in all my videos until
recently is my 20 year old KitchenAid. It still works, but I was worried that it’s
getting a little old. Parts of it are literally held together with tape. It has a metal piece
that tends to pop out and requires occasional banging back in with a hammer, that’s why
I taped it in. It is also not the best mixer for bread. Its motor works like a champ, but
the C hook doesn’t give you the most even gluten development. So 4 years ago, I decided
to splurge on whatever Cook’s Illustrated and Seriouseat recommended as the best mixer,
which is KitchenAid Pro. Quite frankly, I thought it sucked. The motor sounded like
a cat strangling a parrot, and it couldn’t whip 2 egg whites.
I made a video comparing it to my old mixer and then returned it to Amazon. The comments
on that video were some of the most polarizing I’ve ever seen. Half of the people were
sympathetic and told me stories of their KitchenAids burning out. Many people also complained about
their mixers having trouble with small quantities typically required for home cooking and baking.
Kenwood brand came up a lot as a slightly more expensive, but better alternative to
KitchenAid.
The other half of the comments told me I was an idiot. Apparently, there is a screw that
allows you to adjust the bowl height. Did you know that? I didn’t know that and after
reading Stella Parks’ article on this topic it sounds like I was not the only idiot. I
didn’t have any other appliance in my kitchen that didn’t come factory calibrated. If
this adjustment was needed, it might have been a good idea to put a big sign inside
the bowl making it impossible to use the mixer without the adjustment.
Since I already returned the mixer, I couldn’t try adjusting the bowl. And after watching
my brother’s 3 year old KitchenAid Artisan mixer burn out while I was visiting him, I
wasn’t too eager to try another KitchenAid. I even parted with the idea of a new mixer
all together. I mean my cranky old one still worked, right?
So... what happened? Why is this race car red sexy thing now in my kitchen?
What happened was that I spent a day baking Brioche with my friend Valerie Coulet, who
is a brilliant baker. She used KitchenAid Pro, that very mixer I returned, and I was
floored with how well it kneaded bread dough. No need to scrape and flip sticky dough 5
times to ensure even gluten development. It was a dream.
Sure, I could go buy this mixer. But is this what my viewers would be working with? To
find out, I asked you guys to fill out a survey telling me what mixers you have. I was hoping
20 people or so would answer my survey. To my surprise and delight I got 354 responses.
And here are the results. The blue and gray areas are the people who only have handheld
mixers or no mixers at all. To my surprise some of these people said that they bake bread
regularly, which is why I am now posting hand kneading instructions whenever possible. The
rest of the circle are people with some sort of stand mixer. And it’s no surprise that
most of them have a KitchenAid. That’s the huge pink / red area. KitchenAid does kind
of have a monopoly on home mixers. What did surprise me was how many people had KitchenAid
Pro. I didn’t think too many people would splurge on it, but I was wrong. A few of you
have bosch, and kenwood, and this was the catch all category for all the other brands.
Until I saw these numbers, I was actually pretty serious about Kenwood. But the survey
results made me reconsider. I am sorry Kenwood. I still feel a little guilty that I didn't
give your mixer a try. But it’s a KitchenAid world out there and I want to test my recipes
on equipment that’s as close as possible to what most people have at home.
Here is what I needed to learn to use my new mixer productively.
Adjusting the bowl: The first thing you want to do when you get
your new mixer, is put a dime in the bottom of the bowl, fit it with a paddle attachment
and run it on low speed. If the dime is spinning continuously, the paddle might be scraping
the bottom of the bowl and you want to lower the bowl. If the dime is not moving, you need
to raise the bowl. What you want to happen is for the dime to gradually migrate around
the bowl moving about half an inch on each revolution of the beater. This ensures that
your bowl to beater clearance is 1/16th of an inch. To adjust the bowl. Stop the mixer,
unplug it, and lower the bowl. This will expose the screw that adjusts the bowl. In order
to access it, you’ll need to remove the beater. Turning the screw counterclockwise
raises the bowl and clockwise lowers the bowl. It won’t turn much. The whole range is only
90 degrees in either direction. So play with your mixer until your dime moves at this pace.
You might need to make this adjustment once in a while if your bowl height gets out of
whack. By the way, the tilt head models like the Classic and the Artisan have this screw
too. Google for your mixer model and “bowl adjustment” to find instructions on how
to adjust your bowl.
For bread -- add wet, then dry: Most recipes for bread dough will recommend
that you put your dry ingredients in first, then add the wet. This works just fine in
tilt head KitchenAid models. If you do this in the KitchenAid pro, the dough will not
come together at all. This completely threw me off the first time I bought this mixer.
I thought my batch was too small or something. Turns out my batch size was just fine, but
the procedure... needed to be different from what most recipes suggest. In a KitchenAid
pro, you either need to start with a paddle attachment until the wet and dry come together,
and then switch to a dough hook to knead the dough. Or start with the wet ingredients on
the bottom. This way, the dough hook works great from the very beginning. Why aren’t
all the recipes designed this way? I don’t know. Starting with wet on the bottom works
for all mixers. I tested it out on my old tilt head KitchenAid and it worked fine.
Knead bread on low to medium speed: When I read in my manual that you should knead
bread doughs no faster than speed 2 and no longer than 4 to 6 minutes, my first thought
was -- what it can’t handle it? After trying it, here are some observations. The spiral
hook is extremely efficient. I don’t need as much time or speed as I would in my old
mixer. No, I don’t believe second speed is always enough, but speed 4 is plenty and
there is no need to crank it up more than that.
Don’t freak out about the burning smell: The first few times I used the mixer, I got
a weird smell from the motor. The instruction manual said that’s normal and it did get
better after four or fine uses. Part of me still objects to this. In my ideal world,
a mixer company should put its money into its motors, not into offering you 20 different
colors so that your mixer can match your curtains. But I can’t hold this against KitchenAid.
They are just giving people what they want.
Once I understood all these quirks and made all the adjustments, I’ve been in bread
dough heaven. Keep in mind that all my breads use wet doughs. I don’t know how well the
motor would do with stiff doughs. Even if I were to make one batch of bagels or something
like that, it wouldn’t tell you much about the longevity of the motor.
Another major complaint people have with KitchenAid Pro is that it can’t do small batches. Last
time I bought this mixer, I couldn’t get it to whip 2 egg whites. No matter how long
I ran it, I couldn’t get stiff peaks. But that’s before I knew about the bowl adjustment.
I tried this test again after I correctly adjusted the bowl and it went a lot better.
It took about 6 minutes to get to stiff peak stage (about 3 times as long as it would take
my small KitchenAid mixer, but it did eventually work).
The moral of the story is that if you are buying a kitchenAid pro, you should probably
also get a cheap little hand mixer for little jobs, like 1 or 2 egg whites or whipping small
quantities of cream.
Now what about the paddle attachment. How did it do with small batches typical of home
kitchens? I tried it on my standard batch of pate a choux, and it worked fine.
Now let’s talk about the price. How much KitchenAid Pro costs depends on the
color you want, and on your patience. If you are willing to wait for a holiday sale or
for costco to get them in stock, you can bring your price down from about $400 to only $250.
That’s what I did. I figured if I waited for 4 years, another few months won’t make
much of a difference.
The link to the mixer is in the description below.
Here are more thought provoking culinary videos for you to check out and if you are ever in
the Boston area, maybe I’ll see you in one of my classes.