Thursday, August 23rd, 2012 will live forever as a day of
infamy in the Caudill household. It's
the day that my 7qt, 1000watt mixer suddenly died. 6 years prior I had done hours upon hours of
research for the best, heaviest duty, and longest lasting stand mixer. The result was a new Viking mixer. They were not cheap but I was willing to pay
the price for a worthy product. Now,
just the thought of referring to this mixer as worthy, is, well, laughable - to
the point of tears. I found a website
(FYKitchen.com) that had the best price and I was so impressed with the reviews
of the Viking 7qt mixer, I got the Viking food processor too. Again, these were a serious investment for
me, but as far as I was concerned I was getting the best product available in
the world. I have used the mixer to make
all sorts of breads, sweet breads, yeast breads, bagels, sourdough, traditional
white, heavy whole wheat breads and many more.
I Have used this mixer to whip butter from fresh cream from locally
raised and harvested dairy products. I
have used it to whip egg whites for my wife's favorite Angel Food Cake for her
birthday as well as my favorite, carrot cake.
The Viking was certainly not a perfect mixer but it handled everything
that I threw at it and rarely complained.
If one can actually love a mixer, then I, believe it or not, loved my
mixer. While making a cake for a client,
the very day of my birthday (August 23rd) it was whipping egg whites and it
simply shut off and never budged again.
I had to finish whipping the egg whites by hand and by God's grace, the
cake still turned out wonderfully.
That begun the new search.
Was I going to replace my dead Vking with a new one? What about a Kitchen Aid? What were my other options?
Well, my Viking lasted less than 6 years and it was out of
warranty. There was no way that I was
going to buy another, especially considering the cost and the fact that Viking
has stopped production of these units.
For what it's worth, my Viking food processor died about 6 months ago
too.
So, now that Viking is off the table, I have to tell you
that I have been baking and making breads for years and years. The top of the line Kitchen Aid is simply not
able to handle the heavier dough that I use frequently. So, if you do not bake breads, the Kitchen
Aid is an awesome machine that will handle everything you throw at it. Plus, they will always make Kitchen Aid
parts, unlike Viking.
So, what else was out there for someone in my
situation? Well the first thing that I
did was to hit my favorite websites (TheFrehLoaf.com amongst others). The real toss up was between the Boshc Mixer
and the Electrolux Verona Assistant DLX.
These mixers use a different gearing and method to knead the dough. This has enabled them to handle the super
heavy doughs that bread bakers like myself use so often.
There are people that are FIRMLY in the camp of each of
these products, and for good reason. You
have to want to find an issue with these mixers. You have to be looking knowing that once you
find it, you have to spend as much time justifying the fact that it is an issue
as you do explaining what the issue us.
That being said I went with the Verona Assistant. Again this mixer has a great reputation but it
aint cheap. This has been the preferred
mixer for bread bakers all over the globe. And still other famous bread bakers
swear by the Bosch. Either way, you are
not going to go wrong.
Which one did I get? I
ended up purchasing the Electrolux Verona Assistant, DLX mixer. I ordered it from the pleasenthillgrains.com. It's an online paradise for information
regarding home milling and baking. Do the first thing I did was make a large
batch of dough, enough to make 4 - 1lb loaves of a heavily seeded whole wheat yeast
bread. The recipe that I have uses flax meal,
flax seeds. Salba seeds, Salba meal, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, sunflower
seeds, oat bran, and freshly milled Montana Gold hard red wheat. This is definitely a seed heavy bread and by
all counts should produce a dense and rather heavy loaf. Instead of falling flat, the gluten development
was remarkable. That enabled the dough
to rise to a great height prior to being put into the oven and again produced a
surprising oven spring once it was in the oven.
I have eaten a few sandwiches on this bread and really loved it. It was just as good if not better than breads
that were made in the Viking (God rest its soul)...
I don't do a lat of small batch stuff so I cannot comment on
how it does with single batch cookies or cupcakes or anything.
What are your thoughts?
Chef Pat @ CFL
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