>I found that for mixing and kneading bread, my Kitchen Aid mixer (with
>dough hook) had three major drawbacks, and finally opted for a new mixer.
>I encountered these problems with the Kitchen Aid: (1) the simple j-shaped
>dough hook tends to push the dough out to the sides of the bowl; you must
>stop the mixer often to scrape down the sides by hand. (2) The bowl lacks
>a secure lid, and the dough ball, once it finally forms, climbs the beater
>mechanism and escapes into the kitchen. (3) Motor size limits the mixer
>to just a few cups of flour -- six cups, says the Kitchen Aid literature,
>but I have found that heavy 6-cup batches overload and overheat the motor.
Another option that seems to be oft overlooked is the Rival stand
mixers made in the UK by Kenwood. They're cheaper than the KA models,
and they perform better, we purchased one of the 'small' ones for $179
(on sale, true... regularly $220 or so) and, except for it being a bit
loud, couldn't be happier with it.
The 'small' model has a five quart bowl, and 600 watts of power. It's
got low, medium and high speed accessory connections, and the
accessories are cheaper and better made than the KA stuff. They
recommend not using more than 5 cups of shortcrust or pie pastry
dough, or 10.5 cups of yeast dough. The bowl covers seal, nothing can
splash out. The main beater is doubly contoured in an interesting
'twist' shape that does a very good job of mixing, it's made out of
metal.
The bowl's have a raised center so that the beater doesn't leave a
little spot in the bottom center of the bowl that's not hit by the
blade.
The dough hook is a strange twisted J, or maybe L shape, that sort of
has a blade on the bottom to 'cut through' the dough, it has a shield
on the top that prevents the dough from getting past it, but we've
never seen the dough even try to climb, thanks to the shape of the
hook. it's also made of metal.
The whisk is very sturdy and heavy, you can do a lot more than whip
cream with it (Grins).
Accessories are VERY sturdy, the meat grinder is metal, has a
progressive screw on it, they've thoughtfully made the cutting blade
double sided so you can get twice as much use out of it. we recently
turned three pounds of roast into hamburger in just a few minutes, and
there was never the least bit of laboring from the unit.
The pasta extruder is a completely seperate unit that's optimized for
pasta, and does a great job of it. (throw the flour in the bowl, mix
it, pull it out, dump balls of it into the pasta extruder and poof,
you've got spagetti, macaroni, etc.)
There's a whole host of accessories including things like citrus
juicer, vegetable juicer, coffee mill, grain mill, potato pealer
(don't know how this one works (Grins)), blender, etc etc. Bowls are
available in stainless or plastic, as well as one with a D shaped
opening.
If this isn't enough power, they've got a 7 qt model with 650watts of
power for money compairable to the high end kitchen aids... maybe
less.
--
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
-- Benjamin Franklin, 1759
Michael Masterson mjm@wru.org