Author Topic: mastering bread and pizza crust...would kitchenaid mixer help?  (Read 20796 times)

justajane

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Re: mastering bread and pizza crust...would kitchenaid mixer help?
« Reply #50 on: December 10, 2015, 08:25:16 AM »
I'd avoid buying expensive kitchen appliances until you are 100% sure you plan to go that method and think the price is worth it.

Two years ago I bought a pastry blender for all the biscuits I was going to make and freeze for quick breakfasts for the kids before school. It's still sitting in the package. Oh, well. At least it was only $10.

worms

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Re: mastering bread and pizza crust...would kitchenaid mixer help?
« Reply #51 on: December 15, 2015, 07:30:05 AM »
So here is a question for you bread bakers:  How many of you have reduced your overall bread consumption as a way to save time and avoid buying store bought?

Perhaps it would help my family to eat other things for lunches instead of bread (i.e. leftovers or pasta salads).  Do those of you who eat nothing but homemade bread consume bread on a daily basis?

No! We've expanded the bread consumption to match the output!  My counter-top sourdough and overnight-rise works perfectly with my schedule and produces 2x 500g loaves two or three times a week.  At 50 cents a loaf, better to eat that than almost any other staple.

maco

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Re: mastering bread and pizza crust...would kitchenaid mixer help?
« Reply #52 on: December 15, 2015, 07:46:43 AM »
So here is a question for you bread bakers:  How many of you have reduced your overall bread consumption as a way to save time and avoid buying store bought?

Perhaps it would help my family to eat other things for lunches instead of bread (i.e. leftovers or pasta salads).  Do those of you who eat nothing but homemade bread consume bread on a daily basis?

No! We've expanded the bread consumption to match the output!  My counter-top sourdough and overnight-rise works perfectly with my schedule and produces 2x 500g loaves two or three times a week.  At 50 cents a loaf, better to eat that than almost any other staple.
Mind sharing your rise schedule? (And how warm do you keep the house in the winter to be able to do a countertop overnight rise??)

worms

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Re: mastering bread and pizza crust...would kitchenaid mixer help?
« Reply #53 on: December 15, 2015, 01:31:54 PM »
Mind sharing your rise schedule? (And how warm do you keep the house in the winter to be able to do a countertop overnight rise??)

My jar of sourdough sits on the counter in the kitchen, summer and winter and gets fed a half cup of flour and a quarter cup of water most days. Kitchen temp probably varies between 10C and 20C, (perhaps a bit lower than that overnight in winter but daytime maximums will be higher in winter, too, so the average is about the same).  After two or three days the volume in the jar has grown to enough for use, but if I know I am needing more, I over feed it the day before. I mix equal weights of flour and starter, (normally 500g of each) with a dash of salt, a splash of olive oil and some water (for 500g starter and 500g flour, I find that 180g water is about right - but that depends on what sort of loaf you are aiming for). I mix by hand and knead by hand.  I usually do the mixing at about 21.00 and leave the bowl covered on the counter overnight.  In the morning (normally around 06.00) I turn it gently out into a baking sheet, gently nudge it into shape and put it straight  in the oven for about 45 mins.

I cook and heat the house with a Rayburn oil stove which is in the kitchen, so the stove is at about 190C when I get up in the morning and the kitchen stays warm most of the time.

I use the same basic mix for pizza dough, but set it up at breakfast time and it is good to shape and bake in the evening.

MicroRN

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Re: mastering bread and pizza crust...would kitchenaid mixer help?
« Reply #54 on: December 15, 2015, 06:37:03 PM »
I love our KitchenAid.  If you will actually use it regularly, it's worth it.  My mom has had hers for over 30 years and it's still going strong.  Mine was salvaged from a house fire about 20 years ago by my uncle and works like a charm.  I don't enjoy kneading bread, and so I bake far more often with the mixer than without.  On the other hand, I have friends who got them as wedding gifts and they are never used.  I've also succumbed to buying nifty kitchen gadgets that end up as dust-collectors.     

I do pizza dough all the time, usually once a week.  I also make calzones for trips.  Bobby Flay's pizza dough (http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/bobby-flay/pizza-dough-recipe.html) is easy and consistently good.

One of the things I've learned more recently is to let the dough rise at hotter temps than I did before.  I turn the oven on, and when it hits 100, I turn it back off.  You have to play around, but for our oven and the yeast we use, that works perfectly.  If I'm doing overnight rising (usually Lahey's no-knead bread), I put it in the oven with the oven light on.  Our kitchen must stay too cold, because nothing rises well on the counters. 

Arktinkerer

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Re: mastering bread and pizza crust...would kitchenaid mixer help?
« Reply #55 on: December 16, 2015, 07:23:21 AM »
We have a KitchenAid mixer and love it but I would use some caution with using it for kneading. Ours is about ten years old and in that time, I have had to replace an internal bevel gear made of plastic three times. Every time it sheared was during bread kneading and the mixer instructions say that you shouldn't knead for more than three minutes without resting the mixer in between. It is the only plastic gear in the entire drive train and as a result, I usually keep a couple on hand along with the grease they use to pack the inside of the machine.

Third set of gears on ours and they are all metal.  We grind flour and venison as well as make bread so it gets a lot of heavy use. Its the attachment gear that seems to be the one that wears out.  This last time I took the time to really look at the mechanism.  In the end, I made a brass shim to force the attachment gear into a tighter mesh.  I really think the greater contact area will make this set of gears last longer. 

I found you can buy gears thru Amazon and do your own repair pretty easy--youtube has videos.  I bought a larger tube of food grade grease rather than the little packets that they want to charge more for.  I have enough grease for a half dozen repairs but I'll probably just use it for other items around the house.

stripey

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Re: mastering bread and pizza crust...would kitchenaid mixer help?
« Reply #56 on: December 16, 2015, 07:17:25 PM »
Alternatively- sometimes you can get small engineering-type workshops to make a replacement gear for things like that for a slab of beer (or similar). Places like that are usually amused with this sort of thing because it's such a small job.

JLR

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Re: mastering bread and pizza crust...would kitchenaid mixer help?
« Reply #57 on: December 20, 2015, 02:36:14 AM »
I've got a Kitchenaid but (until the bread machine died) I would mix the bread dough in the bread machine then move it to a bread tin to bake in the oven. I hated that huge thing in the bottom from where the mixing paddle was in the bread machine. Even when I wore out one bread machine and moved on to a machine with a paddle that collapsed for baking it still left and awful, hard clump in the bottom of the loaf.

If you have a bread maker, mixing in the bread maker and baking in a regular bread loaf tin in the oven is the way to go.

Once I wore out my second bread maker I started just using my KA for mixing bread and pizza dough. I overheated the KA once (I think it was from doing a quadruple batch of cookies...) and it started to not run so well. Sent it in for a repair and it came back good as new. Has been going fine for a few years since.

My favourite thing to cook with the KA is pavlova. Do they have that in the US, or is it an AUS/NZ thing? Anyway, it is like meringue, but bigger, and after you bake it you top it with whipped cream and fresh fruit. Anyway, the KA is excellent for whipping meringues, cream, making chocolate mousse - all those things you would be standing there mixing with a hand blender for 10 mins. I like that I can walk around the kitchen cleaning up, etc, while the egg whites are whipping or the bread dough is kneading.

I have gotten out of the habit since we've moved house three times in the last 18 months, but until then I would bake bread nearly every day, while also homeschooling our three kids. I think that routine and habit are the main things that keep it going. I would know that I had to have the dough started by a certain time if it was to be ready for lunch (my husband had a set lunch time that he would come home to us). If I was having a washout of a morning and didn't get the bread on in time I would make savoury scrolls in the oven for a change. Much faster than a loaf of bread.

I also have to add that our kids really miss our homemade bread and have been asking me to start making it again. I need to get back in the habit.

stripey

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Re: mastering bread and pizza crust...would kitchenaid mixer help?
« Reply #58 on: December 20, 2015, 04:26:31 AM »
If you want to work with aquafaba (to make vegan meringue) a stand mixer makes it so much easier  too.

fiobot

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Re: mastering bread and pizza crust...would kitchenaid mixer help?
« Reply #59 on: March 01, 2016, 03:51:49 PM »
We bake all of our bread and make pizza every Friday. We have a Kitchenaid stand mixer and we do use it regularly for bread. My wife loves it and she makes a lot of our sandwhich loaves. She also bakes sweets regularly and it has been indispensable for that. Before we had the Kitchenaid we kneaded our breads by hand and it was somewhat of a deterrent to making bread and took much longer. Consequently, we didn't make our own bread as much and sometimes ended up buying it. Bread that is as good as homemade is pretty expensive and the ingredients are not. The mixer isn't the difference between good bread and bad bread, but it is a helpful tool if you cook and bake frequently.

The Kitchenaid is irrelevant to pizza dough in my opinion. I never use it for pizza. The key to good pizza dough is time for a slow rise. I mix up my dough Tuesday and it takes about 10 minutes and I leave it on the counter for a day. Wednesday I divide it into dough balls and transfer each one to its own tall yogurt container to rise for 2 days in the fridge and I take it out 2 hours before I plan to bake them. I changed to this recipe from a previous no knead with a shorter rise and this one is noticeably better, though it requires a bit more time and planning. The other thing that is key is baking it on a preheated stone or steel. I do mine one at a time on my steel on the broiler and they cook in under 5 minutes each.

Here is the dough recipe I use: http://www.bakingsteel.com/blog/72-hour-pizza-dough

Elliot

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Re: mastering bread and pizza crust...would kitchenaid mixer help?
« Reply #60 on: March 01, 2016, 05:38:26 PM »
I see his is an older thread, but I do want to throw in my two cents about getting a kitchen aid. I am in favor (I love you, easily shredded chicken and pork) but whether you need one is up to you.

If you DO buy one, get a Pro series one, not an Artisan. The Artisan one is cheaper, but is no longer made with all-metal gears and the Pro still is. It will stand up to stiff batters without burning out.

Papa Mustache

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Re: mastering bread and pizza crust...would kitchenaid mixer help?
« Reply #61 on: March 01, 2016, 05:46:37 PM »
I wonder if the Artisan can be upgraded if a person needed to repair their's?

Thanks for the recipes everyone. Am venturing into cooking a little now. Wife is a good cook/baker but it's something I've wanted to learn for a long time.

Elliot

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Re: mastering bread and pizza crust...would kitchenaid mixer help?
« Reply #62 on: March 01, 2016, 05:49:14 PM »
That's an interesting thought! I imagine it would depend on if the gears are interchangeable. The artisan is smaller than the pro.

nnls

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Re: mastering bread and pizza crust...would kitchenaid mixer help?
« Reply #63 on: March 05, 2016, 01:34:27 AM »
So here is a question for you bread bakers:  How many of you have reduced your overall bread consumption as a way to save time and avoid buying store bought?

Perhaps it would help my family to eat other things for lunches instead of bread (i.e. leftovers or pasta salads).  Do those of you who eat nothing but homemade bread consume bread on a daily basis?

I eat more bread now, but its more because as soon as I take the bread out of the oven it smells so good I have to eat some and suddenly half the loaf is gone.

serpentstooth

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Re: mastering bread and pizza crust...would kitchenaid mixer help?
« Reply #64 on: March 05, 2016, 01:06:06 PM »
So here is a question for you bread bakers:  How many of you have reduced your overall bread consumption as a way to save time and avoid buying store bought?

Perhaps it would help my family to eat other things for lunches instead of bread (i.e. leftovers or pasta salads).  Do those of you who eat nothing but homemade bread consume bread on a daily basis?

I eat more bread now, but its more because as soon as I take the bread out of the oven it smells so good I have to eat some and suddenly half the loaf is gone.

Bread is also, as foods go, really, really cheap. Depending on what it's substituting for this can be a very good deal.

We only eat homemade bread and other baked goods and I bake once a week. When what I made is gone, we go without until I bake again. IOW, Sunday is not a good day for bread or cookies around here. Wednesday is a pretty safe bet, though. My friend with five kids and a lot of house guests bakes daily to keep up with family demand.