January 24, 2020 - 12:15am
Mixing technique Speed vs Time on Kitchen aid
What is the difference between speed 2 vs speed 8(whatever the last speed is)
So if it takes 1000 revolution to get the bread to the gluten development we want, does it meter to do it in 1 minutes vs 10 minutes.
The assumption is the dough has no added ingredients so it wont break gluten if mixed fast.
The dough is around 80% hydration. And we are going for full gluten development.
Also lets assume we mixed the dough for 5 minutes on 1 speed to incorporate so stuff wont fly around
At the end of the day it is just agitating dough and hydrating it.
Since we are mixing the dough to full strength, the same oxidization will occur.
Ps also I realized there is almost no friction factor on KA.
Any ideas?
Looking forward to responses.
It's very simple: at speed 2 you will have a KA at the end of mixing, and at speed 8 you won't. I am serious here: with regular dough (at 65% hydration or so) you should not go over 2 pounds and speed 2, with wetter dough you can step it up to 4lb, and 3-4, depending on a load. Any more, and you will eventually join those complaing about "poor workmanship".
You will certainly burn up your KA working at higher speeds. Read the manual, should say the max speed and amount of dough.
I have a ~30 year old KA and have never gone past speed 2-3 making bread for all those years. Still runs like a champ!. If your time is that short then maybe consider using a no-knead recipe instead.
If your making straight sourdough then no mixer need., just some strech and folds
If you truly want a mixer that can handle that then I would say to look into an Ank or Bosch,
Remember, there is no rushing breadmaking!!!
After stripping another set of gears I spoke with KItchenAid and they said to stay at speed 2 or lower for bread. Amen to what the others said, you will burn up the motor or strip the gears. I have gone through 3 sets of gears in 2 KitchenAids. They are not bad mixers, just light duty when it comes to bread dough. Whole wheat requires extra care.
Also, even if your mixer could stand super high speeds, the dough would get too warm from friction. Save yourself heart ache and don’t try it.
Danny
how does it affect the dough? Oxidization ? Gluten network ? Maybe only thing is friction which is very little on KA.
Kitchen Aids are great mixers (though not so much anymore due to cheap plastic parts) for CAKE bakers. But even on speed 1 they exceed speed 2 on a commercial spiral mixer. They throw flour out all over your counter. If I had to choose between hand mixing and using a KA I’d hand mix.
I’ve been using my KitchenAid pro line for a year now and produce 12 loaves (4 batches of ~2100 to 2400 g) most weekends. No issues at all. But as stated above, I mix dough on speed one and two only.
I know you bake a lot and in large volumes (for a home baker). And on top of that you use high percentages of fresh milled flour. Your method of using the lowest speed may be genius. I would encourage other KA users to try that. From my experience with 2 KAs I would have not thought it could perform the type of work that you do with yours.
I hate to see users with KitchenAids read mostly negative reviews about their machines. I know my post concerning this has not been rave reviews. Hopefully, your post about using the lowest speed will help many users.
By the way, KitchenAid recommends using no higher than second speed for bread dough. I must admit, a lot of my stripped gear problems resulted with moderate to large percentages of whole grain and impatiently using higher speeds.
Thanks for posting that...
Danny
But Kitchenaid is pretty clear that the max speed when making dough is the setting #2. This machine was an expensive gift from my family and it’s not something I want to wreck.
Something else I thought of thought with the particular machine I have is that the gear assembly is mostly metal. I understand that there are plastic parts that are designed to break if one severely overloads the machine. KitchenAid’s reasoning is that it’s cheaper to replace a plastic part rather than the whole motor.
Im sure KA is only popular because they always used them in GBBO. Never heard of them before that.
My 2kw Swan Vintage was 1/4 the price! I still hand mix and knead though. I prefer to feel the dough whe baking by eye.
Mixing technique is actually really important to how you want your crumb to turn out.
You see all those 'why do I have an empty sourdough loaf' pictures where theyve folded the air in repeatedly to a dough to dry to self adhere.
I call my hand mixing technique the '10 hook stretch, twist and fold'. The hooks being my fingers :p It produces a lovely sandwich loaf consistency with good structure. Machine mixing can actually miss the mark, leaving a portion of the dough less mixed as it clings to the base of the bowl. I found machine mixing more hassle than it was worth.
I have the 8 Qt. commercial KA. The manual states to use only speed 2 for dough. Not speed 1, nor any other. I have had no problems with my machine.
Hi Evrenbingol,
A little on topic and a little related but not quite on topic!
I have an 11 qt Cuisinart orbital mixer and not a KA. I wish it used gear shifting instead of varying motor speed to adjust the mixing speed. As others have stated, you may trash gears trying to run it at the higher speed setting. If you overheat the motor it should have thermal protection and (should) shut down if it overheats at a higher speed setting. Thermal protection won't stop if from ripping up gears!
My silly Cuisinart would shutdown on thermal protection at about 10 - 12 minutes when I have over 2.5kg dough, even at lower speed. If the gear ratio was different, I could run the motor faster and it would have better cooling. I did take it all apart and open up new cool air inlets and "port" the blower outlet (I'm both an engineer and a hot rodder - I couldn't help myself!) It improved the duration before invoking thermal protection, but I can still get it to shutdown on too big a batch.
You and others noted the orbital dough hook really doesn't have much friction heating. I've noticed this on the Cuisinart as well. I purchased a 5kg Italian spiral mixer. I have found that the same running time in the spiral mixer and I can actually feel the outside of the dough bowl gets warmer from friction.
BUT, I made the exact same recipe and the same running time in both mixers as an experiment. I found the gluten development much better in the spiral mixer than the Cuisinart. The other thing that the spiral mixer does is that is folds in air. I get a final dough that is almost like I was French kneading.
I wish everyone good baking!
Cheers,
Tom