Now that I’ve started venturing out into other types of breads, I’ve been wishing more and more that I had a stand mixer to do some of the hard work for me. Recipes with lots of kneading involved would mean having a food mixer that can handle large amounts of dough would be a great addition to my bread tools. This list might seem as if it is something every standard food mixer would have, spider bread bowl unfortunately this is not usually the case. Kneading dough is one of the toughest jobs that you can give a stand mixer, so it’s important to make sure you have one that is going to withstand the kneading process on a regular basis.
In this guide I’ll take you through exactly what you should be looking for in a stand mixer if you want it to last a long time and do a good job kneading all kinds of dough. Note: This site contains affiliate links, where I may receive commissions for recommending products. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Can you Use Any Stand Mixer to Make Bread Dough?
Bread dough can be pretty tough when compared to other foods, such as cookie dough or cake mix, so mixing it and combining it well requires a lot more power than a runny mixture. Because bread dough needs to have good gluten development, the mixing is not just to combine ingredients like with most other foods. With bread dough, the actual mixing has to be very involved and over a longer period of time. For example, a simple cake mix or cookie dough requires you to simply combine the ingredients, but bread dough requires kneading, sometimes at a high speed for anything up to 20 minutes, depending on the type of dough.
Using anything less than a heavy duty stand mixer for bread dough on a regular basis will mean your stand mixer will very quickly wear out and break down. What Functions Make a Stand Mixer Good for Bread Dough? So we know we need something heavy duty, but how heavy duty? And what other features should it have? For bread dough, anything less than 500 Watts is not going to cut it for regular use. You’ll need it to be ideally 575 to 600 Watts for it to withstand the full kneading process without struggling. It’s design should also ideally have metal mechanisms rather than plastic.
This will ensure that the gears and inner mechanisms are durable enough not to bend or even break when in the middle of a kneading session. Some stand mixers love moving around while kneading bread dough! This can be dangerous, as it can literally fall off your counter top while in use, or at best, it will be annoying to have to stand with it and hold it down while it is doing its work. The Stand Mixer Should have Variable Speeds This is an important feature that not all stand mixers have.