On Wed, 13 Apr 2005 09:02:01 -0600
Mike Avery > wrote:


> You might look at eBay for a used Hobart N-50 or 20 quart mixer, or for
> a knock-off of these product at professional supply houses. Or you
> might look at some of the other mixers on the retail market, such as the
> Bosch (which I'm not crazy about) or Electrolux Assistent (which I've
> heard good things about).


I'd be interested in seeing the Electrolux manual. This mixer is
advertised online as being capable of handling 15 pounds of dough, but i
wonder what the manual really says.

I'm curious because i routinely make about 10 pounds of bread dough at a
time in a 30 year old Bosch Universal, and I was thinking about the 7 quart
Kenwood which is advertised as being capable of handling 11 pounds of
dough.

The achilles heel of the Bosch is it's lack of a proper dasher for
medium consistency doughs - you're either making cakes or breads - cookies
will invariably, eventually, break your beaters. They have some new plastic
cookie mixer things that i haven't yet tried, but i don't have particularly
high hopes.

Yes, I know the butter is supposed to be soft before it goes in, but the
manual says to switch to the dough hook after creaming the eggs and butter
with the sugar, which doesn't really work. I suspect that the teeth on the
cookie attachment will break just like they do on the beaters, when the
beaters themselves don't break.

For what it's worth, I found the oldschool heavy duty stainless steel
bowl for my bosch at a thrift store - the type where the sole attachment is
the dough hook, and it connects at the bottom of the bowl instead of at
the top of a post. I find that this actually does a half decent job of
everything - cakes, cookies, whathaveyou. These bowls have been
discontinued for quite some time and distributors have long since run out
of old stock. If you want one, you'll have to look for one in some sort of
flea market, be it online or local.

Anyway, I found a pdf of the Kenwood manual at some point, and the fine
print is that you can make up to 11 pounds of *batter but only 7 pounds of
bread dough. This revelation was a real letdown.

So, for my future mixing needs, I'm back to considering the possibility
of finding a beat up old N-50, and having a shop overhaul the works, bead
blast the exterior, and give it a new baked enamel paint job - or maybe
have it powder coated. My Bosch is gonna die eventually, I can feel it.