How to Buy a Kitchen Mixer

Kitchen mixers remain an indispensable tool for serious and non-serious bakers alike. They cut preparation time in half by taking the labor out of home baking. There are so many kitchen mixers on the market, you'll have to decide which features you need, what size you want and how much you're willing to spend before you start shopping for a kitchen mixer. Here's how to buy a reliable kitchen mixer.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

1. Consider your baking needs in order to determine how much to spend. Inexpensive kitchen mixers whip egg whites and combine cake mixes. Select a more expensive model if you need the machine to spend several hours tackling stiff bread and cookie dough.
2. Get a machine with a bowl size measuring no more than 5 quarts. Machines with larger bowls sell for heftier prices. In addition, working with the larger bowls gets messy when you have to scrape down ingredients.
3. Choose a kitchen mixer with a wide-bottomed bowl and equally wide mouth. Wide bowls distribute ingredients more evenly than narrower, deeper bowls.
4. Buy a mixer that comes with 3 standard attachments: a whisk that whips, a paddle for low and high-speed mixing and creaming and a hook that kneads dough.
5. Find a model allowing you to adjust the standard attachments to provide more or less direct contact with the mixer's bowl. Adjusting attachments helps when you must dislodge ingredients clinging to the attachments during mixing time.
6. Test the machine immediately after buying it. Allow it to run for 15 minutes while observing its performance. Return it to the store if the machine shakes, trembles, smokes from its motor or stalls during this time.

Tips & Warnings

• Avoid judging a mixer's effectiveness on its wattage power. Wattage power doesn't relate to the machine's capabilities and performance. Only output wattage indicates a mixer's effectiveness, but most manufacturers don't provide this information on their machines.