Cookaholics Bulletin Board

My Professional 6 is approaching its ninth birthday and even though I bought it for the most common of reasons. [It was Dirt Cheap] it has been performing well enough that I stopped craving DLX’s and N50 quite some time ago.

After 100’s of hours of using my Kitchenaid with its wide bowl, I do not think I would willingly go back to a narrow bowl planetary mixer. That pretty much makes KitchenAid the only game in town for me.

I have also found that mixing bread dough in mixer is very different from mixing by hand. Kitchenaid does not have a very good handle on this, since they have not changed their bread recipes or recommended procedures in 50 years. Ignoring their recipes is not the worst thing one can do.

Bread made in mixer may require a bit higher hydration than some hand made versions to facilitate gluten formation. I have had to increase hydration for a couple of recipes from the mid 50’s to about 65% to improve my results. With the higher hydration, a simple rest period will give you a jump start on gluten formation and assure that adequate gluten can be formed in the 6-8 minutes that is safe for the mixer. Precise control of hydration does require that all the ingredients be weighed instead of determined by volume.

You may find, like I did, that placing all the wet ingredients in the mixing bowl, dumping all of the dry ingredients on top them, mixing until a ball forms and resting the dough for 10-15 minutes will result in an evenly moistened dough ball that will knead to smooth a silk ball in a short time.

Since there are a few KitchenAid 600 owners and cinnamon bun lovers here, I would love to see the original hand recipes, run some numbers on it, and convert it for the mixer. Would you be willing to share it?

Let me see if I can pry it from my wife, who laughed and nodded when I once joked that getting a recipe out of her was about as hard as getting her vir ... uhmm ... oops ... can't tell that story.

She reluctantly allowed me access to her book for secrets:

3 parts to this:

1)
2 tbsp yeast
1 1/4 cups of lukewarm water

2)
2/3 cup milk
3/4 cup white sugar
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter

3)
6 cups AP flour
1 whole egg plus 1 egg yolk
1/4 cup melted butter

Mix the yeast and lukewarm water and set aside for awhile
When it has bloomed, add milk and gradually half the AP flour.
Beat 1 whole egg and 1 egg yolk and more flour to form dough that is easy to handle
Knead dough on a flour surface until it is smooth and elastic
Cover and let rise until it doubles
Prepare glaze (not posted since we are worrying about the dough)
Punch down the dough and roll into a rectangular shape
Brush with butter
Combine the filling and sprinkle over dough (skipped the filling since we after the dough)
Roll the dough as in jelly roll, seal edges, and cut into desired sizes
Arrange in pan and let rise again
Combine egg whites and 1 tsp of water and brush the rolls
Bake until brown or until done.

There you go, she commented that she got a better cinnamon roll when she did it by hand and ended up with a wetter (higher hydration) dough. With the Kitchen Aid she doesn't feel like she gets to control that. She routinely adds one or more cups of flour to this recipe based on the feel of the dough. We do live in a high humidity area, 85% to 95% most any day, whether the sun is shining or cloudy.

Any ideas or pointers, we'll be happy to try them. I mentioned your approach on the wet and dry ingredients, much like using a bread machine, but the resting after it formed a ball is something she hasn't done up to now.

For my pizza dough, we are mixing in the KA with pretty good results. I've started using the whey from my cheese making as liquid for the dough. We do a poolish a few hours ahead using water, flour, and yeast. Then add the rest of the flour and whey to the correct proportions. After mixing and machine kneading, it goes into an oiled bowl and sits overnight in the refrigerator for a "slow rise". When I shifted to the whey, the rise dropped some compared to using water, but the flavor improved, at least for me.

Alright, things are improving. Jen read the comments and advice, then made cinnamon rolls last night as a present for relatives down in Manila where her brother is job hunting. She liked the results much better after rolling back to a single batch and running the machine for 8 minutes. After removing the dough, she still did a bit of hand kneading to get the "feel" she wants.

Thanks everyone, she is much happier with the KA now that she (and I) have a better understanding of its limitations. Now I have to figure out how to use a Hobart Buffalo Chopper that showed up in a box as a "loaner" until we go back to the States. That made my jaw drop!

I looked at some youtube for that, very wild device!!!