DOUGH MIXER BUYING GUIDE

Shopping for a stand mixer can be daunting. There’s such a wide variety of quality options that it can be difficult to narrow down the best stand mixer for your needs. Let’s first consider what you’re looking for in a mixer.

Stand mixers can be your complete kitchen center, offering you the ability to knead bread dough, shred chicken, whip meringue, mash potatoes, blend smoothies, grind meat, grain, or coffee beans, flake oats, shred or spiralize vegetables, make ice cream, juice citrus fruit, and the list goes on… we have mixers that can do all of this and more!

Maybe you already have appliances to perform many of the tasks that a complete kitchen center could accomplish and you’re on the hunt for the best dough mixer for everything from bagels to pizza dough. We offer mixers that are designed specifically for developing the very best dough imaginable for the home or commercial kitchen—dough that can transform your baked goods in ways you’ve probably considered unattainable. We’ll discuss those options further down this page.

This guide will take you through the major considerations of choosing the bread mixer that’s best for you. First we’ll provide a summary of each of our mixers that could serve as a complete kitchen center, sorted by capacity from low to high. Next we’ll summarize our spiral dough stand mixers and why you might want this style of mixer. After introducing these mixers from six different brands we’ll cover factors including:

• Gluten Development
• Power
• Speeds & Pulse
  
• Can I make just one loaf of bread?
• Style/Design
• Bowl Material & Shape
• Timers
• Weight & Storage
• Height
• Warranty Length

At the bottom of our guide you’ll find a comparison chart with several of these key characteristics, and a link to a comparison chart showing commercial spiral mixers.

COMPLETE KITCHEN CENTERS

If you’re looking for a versatile, multi-purpose mixer for bread dough, cookies, muffins, cakes, and whipping meringue and cream, we have a variety of options for you including the NutriMill Artiste, WonderMix Revolution, Bosch Compact, Bosch Universal Plus, Ankarsrum, and the Haussler Alpha. Each of these mixers have optional accessories that really extend the capabilities of the mixer.

CAPACITY: 6 POUNDS

The NutriMill Artiste mixer can handle 6 pounds of dough, for four loaves of bread. The Artiste is truly compact to fit into small kitchens (it's great for Rvs!). The NutriMill Artiste is a small but mighty machine with its 500 watt motor. It comes standard with a dough hook (with extender), metal whip drive, and whips. Available accessories include a slicer shredder, citrus juicer, ice cream maker, pasta set, and more. With standard attachments and available accessories, this stand mixer/kitchen center performs a myriad of kitchen functions quickly and easily and occupies very little space in your kitchen. The Artiste mixer's whip drive doesn't just spin... it also rotates within the bowl. This combination action provides fantastically thorough mixing and whipping. And when the stainless dough hook is attached, it ensures that dough is kneaded to perfection for outstanding baking results!

CAPACITY: 10 POUNDS

The Ankarsrum, with its unique roller and scraper design kneads smooth, silky, elastic dough quickly and easily. The Ankarsrum mixer comes standard with a stainless mixing bowl and the roller and scraper, as well as a plastic beater bowl, double beater whisks and cake whisks. A wide range of optional accessories can be attached to the Ankarsrum mixer to make it a complete kitchen center. The Ankarsrum can knead up to 11.5 pounds of dough at once, which is enough for seven loaves of bread. This mixer kneads very gently which makes it exceptional for rye bread, since rye has a very weak gluten structure and can become extremely gluey if mixed with too much force.

The biggest difference between dense, heavy baked goods and delightfully textured products is proper development of the gluten in the dough, and the powerful Ankarsrum AKM 6230 mixer is a master of kneading technique! (Note: This mixer used to be called the Electrolux Assistent, and then went by Verona, before being renamed again, to Ankarsrum.)

CAPACITY: 14 POUNDS

BREAKER BAR

All Famag and Spiralmac mixers have an integrated breaker bar, which the Haussler mixers don’t include. A breaker bar ensures ideal metering of the dough into the spiral hook. This three-way kneading process is exceptionally thorough and fast, yet the low impact and widely distributed dough contact of the spiral hook completely avoids overworking and overheating of the dough. Wide-range, infinitely variable speed adjustment lets you dial in precisely the action you want. The breaker bar and dough hook are fixed in the Famag mixers, but are removable in the Spiralmac mixers, making them easier to clean in the sink. 

CAPACITY

Haussler bread mixers are available in six models with capacities from 16 pounds (7.2 kg) of bread dough to 143 pounds (64.8 kg). The Alpha mixer is the smallest model, and the only countertop mixer in the line. All the rest of our Haussler mixers are floor standing and come mounted on casters. 

Famag bread mixers are available in seven models ranging from a 11 pound (5 kg) capacity to a 110 lb. (50 kg) dough capacity. The three smallest models are countertop mixers; larger models are floor-standing and come with attached casters.

The new Spiralmac mixer is available in a capacity range of 11 lbs (5 kg) all the way up 97 lbs. (44 kg).

GLUTEN DEVELOPMENT

POWER

Are you shopping for a new mixer because your previous mixer broke as you tried to mix whole wheat bread dough? We've heard that story many times. Fortunately, all the mixers at Pleasant Hill Grain have the strength and power to knead whole grain bread dough. Kneading is the process of developing gluten in bread dough and bringing the dough altogether into a cohesive mass. Kneading is sufficiently accomplished when the windowpane test is passed. Compared to other mixers on the market, the motors in the mixers we carry won’t burn up when put under heavy loads.

SPEEDS & PULSE 

The Ankarsrum, Spiralmac and Famag mixers have an infinitely adjustable speed knob, and each of the other mixers have between 2 and 4 speed settings. The Bosch Universal Plus and WonderMix Revolution mixers also have a pulse feature.

Certain recipes, for example rye breads, require a very slow, gentle knead. The mixers we recommend for the most gentle kneading are the Ankarsrum and Haussler Alpha (with the paddle attachment).

CAN I MAKE JUST ONE LOAF OF BREAD?

Yes! Each of the mixers on this page from the small Bosch Compact to the Famag or Spiralmac 5kg spiral mixers will mix and knead dough for as little as one loaf of bread (approximately 1-1/2 pounds of dough). 

The new Dough Hook Extender accessory for the Bosch Universal mixer is placed under the dough hook and fits snugly against it. The extender sweeps the center column, allowing as little as one to two loaves of bread to be mixed and kneaded perfectly. It fits the Bosch Universal Plus mixer as well as the older Bosch Universal Classic model. The dough hook extender is now included standard with Bosch Universal Plus mixers! The NutriMill Artiste dough hook has a similar dough hook extender attached to it. 

STYLE/DESIGN

The bowls on our mixers can be categorized into two styles. This probably won’t be a strong factor in your decision making process, but some customers do prefer one style over the other. 

Bundt shape: The Bosch Universal, WonderMix, NutriMill Artiste, and Ankarsrum beater bowl are all shaped like a large bundt cake form—a pioneering design that excels at both mixing and whipping. Twin whips mount on top of the narrow center column, driven from below by a drive shaft. The whips float lightly against the bottom of the bowl, spinning rapidly as they rotate. And the bowl's shape ensures that your ingredients are mixed perfectly. 

Regular bowl shape: The stainless Ankarsrum bowl, the optional ER1 stainless bowl for the Bosch Universal Plus, the Haussler bowl, Spiralmac bowl, and the Famag bowl are all a regular bowl shape, without a center column. 

TIMER FUNCTION 

A timer is a convenient feature to have so you can set your mixer and work on other tasks while your dough is developing, knowing that the mixer will automatically shut-off when the time is up. The Haussler Alpha mixer, Haussler Nova mixer, Ankarsrum mixers are the three counter-top mixers we offer that include an integrated timer. The Nova timer can be set up to 45 minutes, the Alpha timer can be set for as long as 30 minutes, and the Ankarsrum timer can be set up to 12 minutes. The floor-standing Famag and Spiralmac mixers all have a 60-minute timer.

WEIGHT & STORAGE 

Another important consideration for some shoppers is the size and weight of their mixer. If you have the counter space to leave your mixer out on the counter permanently, this won’t be such an issue for you to consider, but many can’t afford to give up counter space for a mixer, so they need to move their mixer in and out of storage every time they use it. Carrying a heavy mixer back and forth, or up and down stairs, just isn’t a feasible option for many of us.

The following mixers weigh 20 pounds or less and can easily be lifted and carried around, if you don’t have the space to keep the mixer on your counter. 

• Ankarsrum 
• Bosch Universal Plus 
• Bosch Compact 
• WonderMix Revolution 
• NutriMill Artiste 

The following countertop mixers weigh 40 pounds or more, so most users will want to find a permanent home for the mixer, or put it on a rolling kitchen cart or counter roller so it can be rolled in and out of their workstation. 

• Spiralmac 5  Royal Queen
• Famag IM-5S Grilletta 
• Famag IM-8S 
• Famag IM-10S
• Haussler Nova
• Haussler Alpha
  

HEIGHT 

Mixer height is a concern for bakers who have kitchen cupboards mounted above their workspace. Below is a table showing the height of our coutertop mixers. For mixers with tiltable heads, we measured with the head up. The height listed is without any attachment on the mixer. Some attachments, such as a blender, add height to some of the mixers when the attachment is in use.

Warranty

DOUGH MIXER FEATURES TABLE

The table below lets you compare the features and key specs of our stand mixers, and more details are available on individual product pages. If you have questions not answered here or would just like to discuss your particular needs, our knowledgeable customer service representatives would love to talk with you.