Decision Made: Electrolux N22 'Royal'
After visiting my brother, who makes a 1-2 loaves of delicious sourdough daily, I decided to expand my fresh pasta and pizza dough making to include breads. Hand kneading a 6-cup pizza dough and pasta for 10-13 minutes, gets tiring (although I'm sure the exercise is good for me!). So in deciding to expand into breads, I also decided a machine was 'kneaded'.
My requirements were 1-2 loaves of dough per day, and, as noted above, the ability to do ~6 cup flour pizza, and 2-4 cup flour pasta doughs. Of course the odd cake cookie dough, and other mixing tasks would be a bonus.
So - what machine to buy? My brother's heavy duty KA (not sure the exact model) has done the job for him over several years, and looks stylish, but not sure I wanted to 'risk' it with regular large pizza doughs. I'm a fan of having over rated commercial gear at home as a 'buy once' type purchase. So I was considering 5-8L commercial planetary mixers, such as the Hobart N50, or Robot Coupe SPA500 or SP800S. I also considered a small spiral mixer (although know they're only good for dough).
I also saw good reviews for the Bosch Universal Mixer Plus, but it's not available in NZ (so much for globalisation!). A similar model people compare the Bosch to is the Electrolux DLX2000 (otherwise known variously as the 'Magic Mill', N24 and Assistent). This also doesn't seem to be readily available here in NZ- but then I found this on our version of e-bay:
http://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/Listing.aspx?id=320410931 [1]
Turns out to be an 'N22 Royal Assistent' - which is an older 400W, 240V version of the DLX2000 as far as I can make out. Looks in good condition (used by a church group), and the price is most definitely right (about $100USD).
It seems to check all of the boxes for my required usage, so now I just hope it's as good as people make out !!