A Mixer Experiment

So, this past Monday I went to take a look at the relatively new KitchenAid 7 Qt Mixer. They’re only available at Williams Sonoma stores for the time being and we have one not too far away. The folks at the store were kind enough to pull out a unit they use for demonstration purposes and allowed me to play with it a bit. Unfortunately, it’s too new to know much about it and I couldn’t mix anything up with it. So seeing it in person is of little utility to rendering a judgement on it. Somewhat ironically, the salesperson helping me revealed she owns a Bosch Universal for her bread baking “kneads”- according to her the unit can handle 5 lbs of flour with ease.

That was the comment that kind of cemented in my mind I’d have to take a chance with the KitchenAid. The Bosch is designed for larger batches of dough, and I typically don’t make such large batches. Most of my recipes are in the 3 to 4 cups of flour range. I do have a white bread recipe that uses 6 cups at a time and a bagel dough that’s similar, but that’s it. (My disappointment in the Pro600 series becomes more evident.) Thus, a mixer after the KitchenAid style is really what was appropriate. Throw in the cookies and baking that the Wife would use it for and that makes even more of a case for sticking with it.

So I walked out of the store with the 7Qt KA. It has a 90-day “no questions asked” return policy. Thus, I figure I’ll put the sucker through it’s paces ove the course of 90 days. What’s more, having un-boxed it, it has a 2-year factory warranty. A sign of confidence in the product I’d say. Either that or they’ve really dialed in the MTBF.

Following are some of my observations about the unit:

• It’s very quiet. Especially when compared with the Pro 600. How quiet? Like, turn it on and not need to raise your voice to be heard above it. It’s quietness actually contributed to my confidence in the unit- I take it as a sign of quality.

• The bowl is the same diameter as the 6 Qt bowl, but it’s about an inch taller. This is nice because, should we keep it, we can also use the 6 qt bowl on the unit without concern for the paddle, whisk or dough hook hitting the smaller bowl.

• All three attachments have some kind of thin-film plastic coating which makes cleaning them very easy. Even dough that’s had a chance to dry on simply peels off with a little warm water.

• The knobs are now a knurled metal instead of plastic. I liked this touch as well. The slide is improved somehow- it’s easy to move it from one speed to the next without skipping speeds.

• I think the speeds are faster across the board. This is just an impression, since I have no easy way to confirm it, but it sure seemed like it.

• I opened the top of the unit up and it appears that the gear housing is made of metal. I mention this because I’ve seen it commented in many places that it had been changed to plastic, which contributed significantly to the drop in quality of the more recent units.

  I addition to the metal gear housing, it looks like the new motor is controlled by some kind of processor, indicating that torque and power can be controlled on the unit. I’d have to investigate this more though to be sure.

I’ve also made a batch of white bread and a batch of pizza dough with it. Additionally, the Wife has made several batches of cookies, including French Butter Creams and a Chocolate Chunk/ Toffy kind of cookie (can you say YUM? Yes- thought you could). She’s pleased with it’s performance so far.

As for the bread and pizza doughs, I have reason to be hopeful. The unit is definitely more powerful than it’s predecessor. It had little trouble working the dough over the course of 15 minutes on setting 4. I stopped it a couple of times and scrape the bowl sides and there was no hesitation when restarting. A definite improvement over the Pro 600. The only cause for concern was a constant “ticking” sound coming from the planetary. It was a periodic ticking, that varied in frequency with the speed setting. My previous units also made that ticking noise, so I’m not excited that it’s still around.

The pizza dough is a small 3 cup batch, but is very wet and needs to be run at top speed in order to fully develop the dough. I though it would sail through the ordeal, but right as the dough was finishing up, the unit seemed to slow down. In fact, when I backed the speed down from 10 to 9, I couldn’t discern a change. I’m thinking that it might be a thermal protection mechanism. The top wasn’t hot, but it was definitely warm meaning the motor was even warmer. After taking the dough out and running the unit at speed 9 and 10, I could once again hear a speed difference. That’ll be something to keep an eye, or ear, on. Speaking of which, and also worth noting, the periodic “ticking” was not heard during this usage.

I’ll be making a large batch of bagels over the weekend. That should be a good test for the unit as well. Going forward, I’m redeveloping my sourdough starters so I can mix up some rye and more traditional sourdough recipes. Those all should provide varying use tests on the unit. The goal is to put as many miles on it as possible and see if any clear signs of fatigue, failure or other deficiency develop.

So, until the next post…