>I have used my 6 qt. Professional Kitchenaid for about a year mixing
>and kneading bread dough. Mixing a bagel dough recently it broke
>(loud whining noise and dough hook stuttered and stopped).
There are a lot of things going on here.
Using the KitchenAid Pro600 as an example - it is rated at 14 cups of
"Flour Power". They portray this as "enough to make 8 loaves of bread".
This gets into a lot of trouble real fast. What's a cup? In a
UseNet news group people with scales were asked to weigh a cup of
flour. The range of weights was from under 100 to over 200
grams. The less than 100 gram per cup people sifted their flour
twice. The over 200 gram per cup people scooped the flour from a
sack very aggressively and didn't scrape of the excess. If you look
at a flour sack, the flour companies think a cup of flour is 120 to
130 grams, depending on the company. The flour companies assume you
will sift your flour once, spoon it into a cup so as to not compress
it, and then scrape off the excess.
So, is that 14 cups 1,400 grams, 1,680 grams or 2,800 grams? I've
asked KitchenAid for clarification on this in the past and have heard
nothing. Let's assume they mean 1,680 grams. If the bread you are
making is at 70% hydration (a little wet for a sandwich bread),
you'll have about 2,860 grams of bread dough.
Is this enough for 8 loaves of bread? Well, yes, if each of the
loaves weighs around 360 grams. Or around 4/5 of pound, which is a
rather skimpy loaf.
If you mix a whole grain bread, the flour power is cut in half. And
regardless of flour, you shouldn't knead for more than 5 or 10
minutes, at no more than speed 2. And you should make no more than 2
batches in a row. After the second batch, the mixer needs a 45
minute cool down.
Check your manuals, there is some variation between models. ALL have
load, speed and batch limits.
KitchenAid maintains that mixer can handle any dough made with 14
cups of white flour. However, if you look at the manual that comes
with a real professional mixer, say a Hobart 300 series machine, you
see that the load capacity varies depending on the kind of
dough. It's been years since I've looked at the Hobart manual, but
if memory serves you can make around 25 pounds of white sandwich
bread, but only 10 or 12 pounds of bagel or pizza dough. The wetness
of the dough makes a BIG difference. A Hobart mixer will last a
bakery 20 to 30 years. Unless they make bagels or pizza. And then
it has an 18 month life expectancy. Hobart makes special mixers for
the bagel and pizza trade. They cost more, but they are cheaper than
a new mixer every year and a half. I really think that KitchenAid
should lay out realistic load limits in their manuals based on the
kind of dough being made.
The discrepancy between the expectations that KitchenAid creates with
their advertizing and what the KitchenAid is rated to do cause most
of the mixer failures I've heard about. I've had my K45SS since I
bought it around 1978. It has a nylon gear. It hasn't been stripped
yet. I also haven't made bread in it for about 10 years. There are
some reports that the quality of the KitchenAid mixers went down when
Hobart sold KitchenAid to Whirlpool. I wouldn't know about that, but
the newer mixers sound tinny compared to my older mixer.
For most of my dough work, I develop the dough by hand. I've made
over 200 loaves a night by hand. Look at the stretch and fold
techniques at http://www.sourdoughhome.com/stretchandfold.html There
is a link on that
page to how I made bread for my bakery using that technique. When I
am making bagels, or need to make bread more quickly, I use my
Electrolux mixer. Last weekend I made 4 dozen bagels in it. It was
more dough than the bowl could hold, but the motor handled it with no
distress. Now, I limit the mixer to 3 dozen at a time. After the 4
dozen batch, I made two more batches of 2 dozen each. It never
slowed down or over heated.
All that said, I love my KitchenAid. For making cakes. For doing
all manner of kitchen chores - grinding flour, making pasta, making
cookies, stuffing sausages, grinding meat to make sausage, extracting
tomato puree from tomatoes. Just not making bread dough.
-Mike
*Bake With Mike <http://www.bakewithmike.com>*
Mike Avery
A Randomly Selected Food Thought For The Day:
Eating while seated makes one of large size;
Eating while standing makes one strong.
- Hindustani Proverb