The real reason you should use a stand mixer isn't convenience

It's no secret that I love my stand mixerand that an overwhelming number of cookies, cakes and frosting recipes.

But when I talk about how important a stand mixer is to baking, people usually respond with something like, “Well, how did they do it back in the day?” And the answer is that they didn't. Many bakers don't realize that using a stand mixer is not a convenience; I use a stand mixer in these recipes because it does the job better than mixing by hand (or hand mixer). Aside from the fact that the stand mixer itself is more than 100 years old, making it a fixture of modern recipe development, desserts made before that era were radically different from today's desserts and better suited to hand-made. The advent of high-powered mechanical mixing enabled new techniques and ingredient proportions to create the desserts we know and love today.

The best stand mixer

A brief history of mixing

Modern American layer cakes are a great example of this; Before mechanical mixing, Americans made cakes similar to the bakers of the old world: sponge cakes were whipped separately from egg whites and yolks, then mixed with fat and flour folded in at the end. These are then finished with a simple meringue frosting or perhaps a dollop of unsweetened whipped cream (both of which are very easy to whip up by hand).

But with the unique capabilities of the mechanical mixer, bakers instead began to develop recipes with a higher proportion of butter, eventually leading to the richer style of cake and frosting found in American bakeries today. These buttery style cakes and frosting just didn't exist back in the day when the only option was to make something by hand.

Obviously, there's a lot more to the story than that, but for now, suffice it to say that stand mixers have given way to their own genre of baking—one that happens to be of particular interest to me. This is partly due to my culinary school training and my background in commercial bakeries and restaurants. I'm not here to say that a stand mixer is essential for all bakers to own – indeed, for a long time inactivity can cause problems For KitchenAid models – it's just that it's pretty essential for the style of baking I focus on in my own work.

How stand mixers work

The most important thing a stand mixer offers isn't convenience; it's power.

Thanks to their powerful engines stand mixers can work with butter at much lower temperatures than you can handle by hand, but also at much lower temperatures than a hand mixer can handle (try creaming 65°F butter in a hand mixer instead of a stand mixerand you'll just watch cubes of fat fly out of the bowl). With this power, the wide, flat paddle attachment can quickly beat relatively cold butter with sugar, turning it into an airy matrix of fat, air and sugar crystals.

This is an essential part of the creaming method, as butter loses its ability to aerate as it heats up, meaning that butter creamed at hand (or hand mixer) temperatures will never be fluffy or light. The smaller amounts of dough and batter produced by warmer butter result in lower yields (because aeration physically increases the space occupied by the dough or batter) and poor rise, resulting in heavy cakes and flat cakes. So if you've ever suffered from flat cookies, the poor creaminess of your hand mixer may be to blame.

For more information, please see our detailed review on technical process related to the creaming method.

In addition to its ability to work with relatively cold and hard butter, the effect of the paddle attachment of the stand mixer is unique; it's a single paddle that's wide and flat, capable of hitting, rubbing, spreading, spreading, and folding.

While both the stand mixer and the hand mixer can contain butter and sugar, the paddle of the stand mixer achieves more volume along the way while maintaining a lower temperature for the ingredients (however, my cookie dough is thick and easy to work with, not sticky, and my cake stays The doughs cool , they retain air better for even ascent).

Thanks to their powerful motors, stand mixers can beat whole eggs straight from the fridge, without having to separate the whites and yolks or bring them to room temperature first. How do I make it? glossy chocolate brownie or a crack-free one jelly rollworking with cold eggs promotes a more stable foam in baked goods.

This again allows for techniques that were not possible in Ye Olden Days. In the 1800s, bakers had to separate the whites from the yolks in order to beat each separately to make something similar. chocolate sponge cakebut a stand mixer has the power to beat cold, whole eggs into a stable foam.

So for those bakers who consistently experience low rise with their sponges, or find that their egg brownies always seem raw or dense, or that their Swiss meringue always seems too heavy and buttery, the problem may be an insufficient hand mixer.

So which is the best blender, you ask? I wrote it's all about my love for the six-quart KitchenAid Pro.

LIZARD

Which is the best stand mixer?

We're huge fans of the KitchenAid Pro stand mixer, but we also recommend other models from Wolf, KitchenAid and Anchor room. You can read our full review stand here mixers.

Does KitchenAid make the best stand mixers?

Well, two out of four of our best stand mixer picks manufactured by KitchenAid. You can read a more detailed comparison of (almost) all of them KitchenAid stand mixers here.