Get Ready for Your Last Stand

For some reason, I started reading about stand mixers. While I was doing that, I decided to see which one is currently considered the ultimate. I could be missing out.

When I say “ultimate,” I don’t include commercial mixers. I’m talking about mixers that sell for less than a grand.

What do people always say when you say “mixer”? “KITCHENAID!” Sadly, they have been fooled.

Kitchenaid makes great-looking mixers based on the old Hobart Kitchenaid commercial mixers. Not the real Hobart commercial mixers with bowls big enough to bathe a golden retriever. The little-bitty ones with 5-quart bowls.

Hobart is a commercial appliance maker, and they started the Kitchenaid company in 1919 to make mixers. Hobart doesn’t make Kitchenaids any more. They make real commercial mixers starting at over $4,000.

The old Hobarts looked like modern Kitchenaids, but they were simpler and tougher. They had strong gears that lasted decades. Modern Kitchenaids look like Hobarts on the outside, with added levers and buttons and lots of pretty colors designed to fool women, but they have plastic gears, and they fall apart.

Even Kitchenaid’s “Pro Line” mixers come with a warning. You’re not supposed to knead dough for more than two minutes because your motor might burn up. I guess this protects the plastic gears.

I think this is Kitchenaid’s (Whirlpool’s) way of voiding warranties. They sell you a tool to do a job, knowing it’s not fit for the purpose. You try to use it, and they say you abused it.

You buy, you keep. So sorry. CCP keep you money.

It’s strange that Kitchenaid mixers came from Hobart, and Kitchenaid now pretends it has a “pro” line. Hobart’s Kitchenaid was the real Kitchenaid pro line. CCP-adjacent Kitchenaid doesn’t make commercial-grade products.

When I decided to look at current reviews, I went to America’s Test Kitchen. They have done a fantastic job in the past. Before they fired Christopher Kimball. They do tons of testing. Before they will give you a cookie recipe, they’ll make hundreds of cookies. I thought they would know about mixers.

Guess what they recommended? “KITCHENAID!”

In the review itself, they said the mixers might burn up when kneading past the two-minute mark. So they recommended mixers…you can’t actually use. Many, many doughs go way past the two-minute mark.

Those kids can’t be trusted without daddy in the house. Everything went to pot when Christopher Kimball left.

What else do they like? Ankarsrum. Named for a town in Sweden, or maybe Norway, like there’s a difference. Ankarsrum mixers are supposed to be lifetime appliances, and they do a great job. For the low price of $750. Caveats: they’re hard to use, so you might ruin things you’re trying to cook. But they’re great. Really.

I don’t see the logic. If there were nothing else available, I would understand. But what if there is something else?

They didn’t test the something else. They didn’t test Bosch or Nutrimill. These companies offer more or less the same thing. Bosch calls it the Universal Plus mixer. The Bosch version has a side thing on it you can use to attach other implements. You can grind meat and shove it into sausage casings with it. You can grate big blocks of cheese.

I’ve had one of these for maybe 15 years. I got it when I was making pizzas for a church run by con artists. They already had a tiny Hobart, and it would make a few portions of dough. The Bosch will make 14 one-pound loaves of bread in one shot. Yes, you read that correctly. It’s crazy. That’s enough dough for 14 16″ pizzas.

The Bosch is light. It’s quiet. It’s easy to clean. It lasts forever. It does a very good or great job with everything. You can get a new Nutramill without the Bosch side tower for $300, so less than half the price of an Ankarsrum.

Years ago, I had a complaint with the Bosch. It has a plastic pillar sticking up in the middle of the bowl, and when I made cheesecake, batter would stick to the pillar. It didn’t get mixed in. Now they have a scrapey thing you attach to the pillar, and it shoves unmixed material back where it will get mixed. Problem solved.

I have no idea why ATK didn’t review the Bosch. They should know about it. It’s famous among home chefs and pizza makers. It’s the number-one mixer for serious pizza at a consumer-mixer price.

The Universal Plus has suction cups on the bottom to keep it from jogging around your counters. ATK says it doesn’t like suction cups, because they don’t stick when flour gets on them. Hmm. How could that be fixed? Let’s start a second Los Alamos project. Maybe you could stop setting the mixer down on counters covered with flour.

Maybe ATK isn’t that great now. They also jacked up their prices. Here’s a tip. If you subscribe, and they send you an email with the new Biden-level price, turn them down. They’ll email you again and give you over 50% off.

I would rather have a 12-pound mixer with suction cups than a heavier mixer that relies on mass I have to lift. Not that the Ankarsrum is all that heavy at 18 pounds.

I also have a 7-quart Cuisinart SM-70 stand mixer. It used to get good reviews, but they seem to have vanished. It’s the same mixer Kenwood makes or made. It has been fantastic for me (used very rarely), but you literally need hearing protection to use it. No exaggeration. Cuisinart makes a different mixer now.

The Cuisinart supposedly has 1000 watts of power, and it has done everything I asked it to. It also has a timer with a digital display. Cuisinart is kind of a hinky company, though, so I now avoid buying their products unless there are no substitutes.

Since I bought the Cuisinart, a lot of people have said some pretty nasty things about the reliability, so maybe it’s not so great. Because I have a hand mixer and the Bosch, the Cuisinart has had a very easy life. It has not been tested. It has coasted along like Hunter Biden.

I went for big mixers because no one wants to spend maybe $400 on a kitchen tool and then have an event where it won’t get the job done.

I believe I got the Cuisinart because I was tired of scraping cheesecake batter off the center pillar of the Bosch bowl. I kept the Bosch because it was so wonderful otherwise, and then Bosch fixed the pillar problem.

If you have a Kitchenaid, you’re probably pretty upset right now. I don’t blame you. I understand why you bought it. They look great. And ATK recommends them highly.

It looks like Ankarsrum mixers are only for people who bake every day. I say go with Bosch or Nutrimill. Nobody likes a learning curve that has to be ascended over and over and provides no real benefit.

I still need a good hand mixer. I bought a little Cuisinart 7-speed, but it was annoying because it always started at top speed. It starts in first gear, but for the first half-second, it goes much faster. Then it slows down. By then, it has thrown your ingredients on the wall. I bought a new Cuisinart 9-speed with slow start, which it does not actually have. It literally does exactly what the cheaper one did. I emailed them, and they told me to return it to Amazon, because they didn’t care. The return date was long past.

When I finally get a decent hand mixer, I’ll be like $150 into it at the start because of the Cuisinarts that went to Goodwill.

That’s it, I guess. Avoid Kitchenaid and Cuisinart. Bosch is good. Ankarsrum is probably good if you like a pointless challenge. ATK is suspect.

Good luck with your pizza and cookies.