Kitchenaid Stand Mixers, Great Home Made Bread in a Hurry
Nothing says “Welcome” any more than the smell of fresh baked bread. It is one of those smells that we somehow shove into our memory bank at an early age that stays forever. At this time of year as we go to holiday gatherings we are constantly reminded of those childhood smells. Fresh breads, stollens, cookies, pumpkin pie… uuhm I am making myself hungry just by mentioning them.
I remember the huge mixing bowl and the flour bin and my mother stirring the yeast into the water, slowly adding the flour until it was too hard to stir and then turning it out onto the bread board to begin kneading. Add flour to the board, roll it over, punch it down, roll it over punch it down again twenty or thirty times. If it got too sticky add more flour until the dough got just right and set it aside to rise. Once it had risen she would form the loaves and put them in the oven. 10 minutes later the house was filled with the most heavenly smell in the world…Fresh Baked Bread!
Years later when I started my own household I renewed my interest in making fresh breads. Some of my early experiments were fantastic and some were disastrous. The non-yeasted buckwheat bread was so bad that even the squirrels would not eat it when it went out to the feeder. As time has gone by, I don’t bake as often as I should but there is no substitute for home made bread. Today the pace of life seems to leave less time for bread baking so I have looked for a few short cuts to the process. When the bread machine was first introduced I looked at one and decided that it was not for me. I could not imagine how adding all the ingredients to the same pot that you cooked it in would work. I know that there are some who would swear by them but somehow there is something missing in the process.
The place to save the most time is in the kneading process, I will spare you of the chemistry lesson but you get the best bread results when you have plenty of air mixed into the dough and that is generally the hardest part of making bread. Using a mixer to take care of this part, saves a lot of time and energy. Until a few years ago using a mixer to make bread was solely for the large bakeries which had a monster machine that could turn out several pounds of dough at one time. This convenience has now become available for the modern homemaker. I know , I know it has been around for a while, but humor me… I can remember when it wasn’t.
For the purpose of kneading the Stand mixer cannot be beat (pun intended), and Kitchenaid has come out with the best stand mixer as far as I am concerned. The recipe that I use yields 4 large loaves, I got the recipe from The Tassajara Bread Book
This little cousin to the big Hobart (a mere $8267) is ideal for home use and it packs a lot of power for such a small machine. The Kitchenaid Mixer has a powerful 575 watt motor with a variable speed on/off switch. You can set the speed exactly at the right speed for mixing the dough. The bowl is raised with a lever which is great if you want to mix butter or cream cheese by slowly raising the bowl as you start the mixer. It comes with a wire whip, paddle wand and a dough hook just like the monsters found in a commercial kitchen. You can even get other grinding attachments and use it to make pates and ground meats. The Kitchenaid Stand Mixer normally retails for $499, it is now on sale for a substantial discount running through the end of this year at $299. Sales of this sort tend to run on and off through out the year so be sure to only buy when you find it on sale. It is possible to find them refurbished for even less. It is a great addition to any kitchen and I must say this little work horse is not your grand-mothers stand mixer.
Of course you can reserve a loaf’s worth of the dough and make a batch of Cinnamon Rolls. Just roll it out really thin add some cinnamon sugar and some raisins. Roll it up tight and then cut it into 1.5″ rolls. Let it rise a long time since you have taken all the air out with your rolling pin and bake until it is golden brown. Now you get a weeks worth of bread and breakfast besides. If you feel Really Brave and want a work-out as well try grinding your own wheat berries for the flour. You will really appreciate what our forebears went through.
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Tagged with: Home Made Bread • Kitchenaid Professional Stand Mixer
Filed under: Cooking Knives • Cooking Tips and Techniques
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A stand mixer is something I’m still lacking in my kitchen – I’m trying to teach my two tween boys to cook and bake, it would be a lot more fun if we had a mixer! I hadn’t thought about it for baking bread, which is silly, because I used to work in a bakery and used one of those GIANT mixers for dough before. Interesting!
This thing is a bit pricey but it is a real workhorse. That said, if your bake bread by hand there is nothing finer than learning from mom, I Did! And kneading bread is something I got do do as a kid.