I have a small Kitchenaid mixer (250 watts) and have used it for preparing many one and two loaf bread/flour dough batches. The recipe I would like to try calls for 5 lbs of flour and it seem that cutting it in half would be the easiest way to handle the amount of dough with my small mixer.
Will a mixer this small even handle 2.5 lbs of flour for bread? I am guessing that is about 10 cups of flour which will fit into the bowl. Thanks for your input.
I wouldn't go more than 8 cups with a 250 watt motor, less for wheat/whole wheat and rye bread doughs. The most I've done in our old K45 is 6 cups of mixed white and wheat, and I felt bad for the mixer, it was straining so much. (It's an old friend that's served us well, so I hate to stress it too much.)
I'm assum> I have a small Kitchenaid mixer (250 watts) and have used it for preparing
I agree. We have a 250 W 4.5 qt KA. Bread dough containing about 6-8 cups of flour is about as much as I like to mix at one time. And even then the mixer does tend to thump on the counter a little. For five pounds of flour I'd split the batch into three parts, not just two parts.
I'd like to have a dollar for every time I've posted this same information.
With these type of electrical appliances wattage has very little to do with shaft horsepower (usable power available), wattage is a measurement of electrical energy *consumed*, NOT power produced... wattage is the basis for how your electric utility company computes your bill, has no bearing whatsoever on how efficiently you used that electrical energy. Think of a 100w light bulb, if you place an opaque shade over it then the lighting benefit is substantially reduced even though it still consumes and you pay for 100 watts. The KA mixers have no transmission, they have fixed gearing, therefore depending on the gearing of the particular unit the greater the load applied the greater the heat produced... what an inefficient method for heating your home, with a KA mixer.
Often the KA mixers with the lowest wattage ratings also have the lowest gearing to wattage ratios, therefore produce the greatest shaft horsepower... they just aren't capable of running at the highest rpm. The KA mixers with the highest wattage ratings generally will be geared at higher ratios so as to be capable of running at the highest speeds but produce the least shaft horsepower.... under load they slow way down and produce tremendous heat, until the heat sensitive overlaod cuts electrical power, before the motor becomes damaged from overheating.
What you really need to concern yourself with is that your KA bowl is large enough to contain all the ingredients you want to mix.... odds are your 250w mixer runs best at lower rpm, and has a smaller diameter dough hook, therefore is capable of greater torque over longer periods without overheating, and is more energy efficient. Your machine is more energy efficient for dough kneading than the higher wattage machines, which are more energy efficient for producing whipped cream.
I think it's a sin that the gubermint permits small appliance companies to advertize wattage ratings as though that meant power produced when what it really means is power consumed... it's absolutely false advertising. KA gets away with it because theirs is not a commercial machine. Commercial machines must list Horsepower. KA definitely does not produce a commercial mixer, in fact if you read their warranty it specifically states that using their mixer for commercial purposes voids their warranty. Essentially KA produces toys r us stand mixers.
However many restaurants and other smaller commercial establishments, and even large commercial culinary installations use KA mixers because they are relatively inexpensive compared to true commercial machines. (do you have any idea how many KA mixers one can buy before spending more than for one Hobart... the service contract alone on a Hobart costs more each year than the price of a KA mixer)... and they are small so they occupy very little space, perfect for small jobs. A restaurant can afford to have one KA mixer per cook, so no one needs to wait their turn, and if a KA mixer burns out it's really no biggie, it's written off as a capital expence and replaced with a new one, same as folks replace low end TVs.
In addition to the above tips, be sure that you know exactly how much you are putting in the mixer. If you scoop the cup into the bag you could be getting a 6-7 ounce cup of flour. Generally speaking, your cup of flour should weigh between 4-4.5 ounces. You can see that if your flour weighs considerably more, the alloted water for the recipe will not be enough and the dough will be very dry. Kneading dry dough is very hard on the machine. Janet
All my small kitchen appliance manuals and warranty cards reside in the lazy susan neatly tucked away behind the spices, measuring cups and spoons and "stuff." ;)
Cross posting to more than one newsgroup at a time is generally accepted to be a no no. It clutters up each of the cross posted NGs with replies not relevant to each newsgroup receiving the cross posted message.
That's not always true, Kent. In this case, the message DOES belong in both newsgroups. If the original message is addressed to both groups, you will see the same responses here that are in the other one, so there will end up being LESS repetitious responses.
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