Finessing the height of my Kitchenaid bowl
When I had a Kitchenaid 4.5 qt mixer with the 'J' dough hook, the dough was constantly hanging onto the hook and just spinning around the bowl. This was the primary reason I got a 6-quart Kitchenaid mixer with the spiral hook. And once it came, I figured all of my problems would be gone. I'd now be able to put the dough into the bowl, set the timer and go watch tv for five minutes. Not so fast...
Although it's doing a better job than the 'J' hook, the dough is still grabbing onto the spiral hook. Sometimes it grabs on completely and just spins around in the bowl. Sometimes a lot of it is on the hook and only a small portion at the bottom actually gets kneaded. And what happens a lot is that the dough seems to separate into two sections. One part will be getting kneaded, and another satellite spins around the outside.
I find myself pulling the dough off the hook quite a bit, but one thing that helps is to keep my hand on the bowl height lever. As soon as I see the dough trying to hang on, I'll lower the bowl some till it lets go. Sometimes, the dough is relentless and I find myself keeping the bowl only partially lifted and adjusting the height based on what the dough is doing.
Am I the only person doing this? Is it bad for the mixer? Is there something I should be doing differently?
Sounds like a little more hydration would solve that issue.
Gerhard
Change the recipe to solve a mixer problem??
I second the hydration comment. Higher hydration dough will stick to the bowl more and have less of a tendency to climb up the hook. At least that has been my experience, and it doesn't take a big change in hydration to make a difference.
I guess it all comes down to that my recipes are in a evolutionary state all the time, I am open to improvements and don't feel any recipe is set in stone. To me a recipe is the road map to achieve a result and as on any map there are usually multiple ways to reach your goal.
Gerhard
This problem happened to me yesterday on a 69% hydration dough. I've got two pizza dough recipes that are exactly what I want. I don't want them changed in any way. One is 63% and the other is 61%.
Since no one on this forum is disputing what the two of you are saying, I have to assume that yours is the common wisdom here. For me, the recipe and the quality of the dough come first, and convenience comes second.
If you think that your recipe is not changing you are fooling yourself, the moisture content of flour can change from one bag to the next, the humidity in most peoples homes is different from season to season or even from a sunny day to a rainy day. So these things beyond our control are having an effect on our dough so I make changes to the variables I can control to keep things looking the way I expect them to. Often that means adding a splash of water and on rare occasion adding a little bit of flour. I guess the way I bake is more by feel and you are trying to make an art into a science.
Just my thought
Gerhard
For the past 2 months I have been chasing hydration all over the place. Cooler, drier ambient air, heating systems that dry the air, and other factors affect the hydration of the dough. Then the outside temps will warm up, the furnace runs less and again I'm chasing the hydration.
One way that I know my hydration is too low is when the dough climbs the hook on my planetary mixer. Very little added water can remedy the problem. Like gerhard I see this as a change in the dough and not a fault of the mixer.
As a life-long technician I too wanted to approach bread making from a scientific perspective. I have had to put much of that aside and rely more on my senses, which is totally foreign to me.
Hi Enchant,
I have a DVD (Baking With Julia Vol. 3 "Breads") of ACME baker Steve Sullivan doing this type of thing with a KitchenAid 5 quart mixer. When the dough has climbed the hook too much he lowers the bowl and actually speeds up the RPMs to fling the dough off the hook.
I've done that speed up thing, too! Can't do it if there's a ton of dough hanging on, but if the end just refuses to come off it works well.