Home Bread-Bakers v106.n023.2
[Advanced]

Stand Mixers

"Werner Gansz" <wwgansz@madriver.com>
Sun, 4 Jun 2006 07:37:41 -0400
v106.n023.2
Our Kitchen Aid died a few months ago and we replaced it with a 
Viking.  It is a powerful mixer and will handle all large home-baked 
bread recipes.  Its dough hook is also more aggressive than KA's and 
will quickly mix flour and liquid without using the beater first if 
that's what the recipe calls for.  The KA always seemed to create an 
impenetrable sidewall of dry flour.  The height of the beater and 
dough hook are adjustable so you can set the gap between them and the 
bowl to be very small. All of the standard attachments are 
available.  Rear castors make it easy to move around the counter.

The only drawbacks to the Viking so far are that it makes an awful 
screeching noise when running and the beater and dough hook do not 
lock in place with a detent so they occasionally rotate out the head 
when scraping dough from them.

We also looked at the Magic Mill but it was just too big for home 
baking.  It really isn't designed to make small (3 cup) batches.  The 
Viking handles small batches fine.