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Kneading Dough with an Old Hand Cranked Food Chopper

Antilope's picture
Antilope

Kneading Dough with an Old Hand Cranked Food Chopper

I was looking in the back of one of our kitchen cabinets when I came across my mother-in-laws hand cranked Universal No.2 food chopper/grinder. It was in a brown paper bag and all the parts are there. The thing is in perfect condition, although it must be over 50 years old, it's as shiny as the day it was made.
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Here are some pictures on Google images of the same model:
https://www.google.com/search?q=universal+no+2+food+chopper&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=5AISU62eDIn9oATLwoCAAw&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAQ&biw=1344&bih=611
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It got me to thinking, I wonder if it could be used to knead bread dough by running the dough through it?
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Here are some old newspaper articles I found, about using a food chopper to make southern beaten biscuits by putting the biscuit dough through it:
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"Put Dough Through Food Grinder For Beaten Biscuits Made At Home" - The Tuscaloosa News - Nov 10, 1955
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=UvkcAAAAIBAJ&sjid=1JkEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5111%2C1149255
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"Biscuit Dough Took A Beating But The Results Were Worth It" - Lakeland Ledger - Jul 21, 1976
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=qaswAAAAIBAJ&sjid=yPoDAAAAIBAJ&pg=7146%2C5354542
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I wonder if you could take it a step further and knead yeast bread dough? Something to try in the future.

tchism's picture
tchism

It might be too tough on the dough but there's only one way to find out.

Bob S.'s picture
Bob S.

I never would have thought that a food processor can knead dough, but it does. Perhaps your antique food chopper/grinder might be able to produce bread dough as well as biscuit dough. The mechanism is not dissimilar to some dough developers used in continuous mix operations.

Bob

MisterTT's picture
MisterTT

kneading dough, you can shape excellent biscuits with it, if there's an attachment for that. There should be. The biscuits look like this:

http://birzuduona.lt/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/birzu-sausainiai1.jpg

You make a basic biscuit dough (though my mother often made dough for this type of biscuits with mayonnaise) and then pass it through the meat grinder so it forms a long strip, thereabouts the same length as your baking sheet.

Antilope's picture
Antilope

The hand grinder doesn't have a sausage filling attachment like some do.

I'm going to at least try the southern beaten biscuits recipe (similar to scones). That sounds interesting.