KitchenAid 7 qt KSM799WH Commercial Stand Mixer Reviews
I'm considering buying the KitchenAid 7 qt KSM799WH Commercial Mixer but find very few reviews and a lot of comments confusing the mixer with another KA 7 qt. This 7 qt commercial mixer is the only KA currently being built with a metel casing protecting the gears. I've been using the Pro HD model and since I've been making bread and pizza dough have stripped the gears several times after cracking the plastic casing a year ago. We're currently waiting for a new plastic casing to repair the Pro HD.
Although I'm a novice, I weekly make fresh pizza dough for our family. Lately, I've mixed from 1-5 batches of an authentic Vera Pizza Napoletana Dough recipe. I understand that is a low kneading type dough? Each batch weighs only 1 pound. Typically, I'm making only 2 pounds of dough every 2 weeks. My current KA Pro HD cannot handle the pizza dough w/out stripping the gears after a month or two of use so I'm ready to move on. I'd considered a Hobart N50, but one very good youtube review said that if I was going to be making even 2 small batches of pizza dough a week, I'd burn up the motor. If pizza dough will burn up a Hobart N50, which will fit my KA attachments, then that is probably not a good investment for me. Not sure where I'd read that someone was mixing several pounds of pizza dough with the new KA 7 qt Commercial KSM799WH Stand Mixer but it gave me hope of going with that model again.
I understand that Avancini brand spiral mixer is the only Italian made mixer available in Canada or SF, CA but also read that it needs a minimum of 3-6 pounds of pizza dough to run properly. That's not a good investment for me if often I'm only making 1-2 pounds. One Avancini user said he uses his KA for the smaller batches, which sends me back to considering the KA.
I have a KA Pro HD and know that all of the KA's more recently made are built with that plastic casing, except for this newer model KA 7 qt Commercial model KSM799WH with the orange cord that only comes in white. This is what I'm hoping that I'll hear from, owners of the KSM799WH model and how it will handle pizza dough. How many pounds of dough can it take?
I also enjoy making pasta, sour dough, foccacia, French bread, and crossoints and want to know if this KSM799WH model will handle that type of bread making?
Any videos of this machine in action, aside from the KA demo?
Trust me, you have to be doing something special to kill KA over 4-5 2 pound batches of dough.
In my experience, and that of many others, the words bread dough and Kitchenaid do not belong in the same sentence. If your primary use of a mixer is for bread and pizza dough, look somewhere other than KA. Your current mixer has already given you that lesson.
Jeff
I'll be curious to hear others' impressions of this mixer. (I have heard one good review on another board.) However -- yes, I'd concur with Jeff. The older Hobart-built KitchenAids (i.e. prior to 1986) are another story, though, and could probably handle your pizza dough just fine.
If you'd prefer a new mixer (with a warranty), do a bit of searching on the Bosch Compact. They are amazing little all-purpose mixers, definitely up to the task of kneading, and much more reasonable than anything you mentioned. The Bosch Universal Plus is another good option, but would work better with a larger batch of dough than you currently make. The Verona Assistent would be good too, but like the Bosch Universal, perhaps overkill.
Hope that helps!
dupilcate
yes, your comment is very helpful, thank you...I am considering the Bosch but as you're now stating that a Bosch Compact could handle kneading 5 pounds of pizza dough or a double batch of whole wheat pan de mie dough to fit in the 16 inch pullman pan I have, mix a batch or two of pasta? If that is all I need, I may go that direction. A Bosch Compact would not go on overload and the Bosch Universal Plus would not be needed then? I can repair my current KA and continue to use the attachments I have. Although, I prefer a stainless steel bowl.
Someone mentioned a Kenmore Mixer to me yesterday, any thoughts on that? Some of the reviews stated that they were not as quality as they used to be.
I've been kneading by hand over the past week, as the KA is not working, it's fun. Pizza dough & white pan de mie came out great. Just finished mixing a whole wheat/oat meal/honey creation, hoping for the best! Double batches for the 16 inch pullman pan is a lot of dough for me to push ww. I'd just like the luxery of a mixer in the case I don't want to :)
Happy to be of some small help! The Compact will handle up to 6 lbs of dough -- but honestly, if you were doing 5 lb batches all the time it might be wiser to go with a Universal. Bosch makes tough machines, but I wouldn't want to ride on the outer limits all the time. However, if a 1-3 lb batch is your standard, the Compact would probably be perfect. You can get a stainless bowl for either mixer, by the way.
And yes, there is always hand kneading! It really is fun. (If my shoulder wasn't a bit goofy, I would probably have skipped the mixer all together, but sometimes I still knead by hand if it's something with mainly white flour.)
Read up all you can on both mixers, and ask questions of those who own them. I can answer based on my experience with the Universal, but not the Compact. (I only wish our first mixer purchase had been a Compact rather than a KA Pro, which obviously wouldn't work for bread.) Speaking of, isn't it possible to replace the plastic gear box with a metal one now? I know the Mending Shed carries some, but am not sure if they work for your particular model or not.
If so, I fear that they have gone the same way as KA. In olden days they were made in the UK and had metal gears and housing. Not indestructable, but mine is over 40 years old and still working. I regularly mix 1500gr of flour and 900ml water + yeast, salt and oil, say 2,500gr or 5.5lb of 60% hydration dough.
The company was sold to DeLonghi in Italy and they moved production, I think, to China.
Yes, I was asking about a Kenwood, not a Kenmore, thank you for all of the information. I read a few similar reviews and you're confirming that.
Unfortunately, they don't make a metal casing for it, I just asked dh two days ago as I thought the same thing. (But he was wrong, see post below http://www.mendingshed.com/housing.html)
Boy, I've been reading reviews, even from this site about the Bosch Universal and I'm not too thrilled with what I'm reading about them. One person said they scrapped the dough out of the machine to knead in their KA, ugh! Talk about confusing! My mother has a Bosch Universal from the 80's that she loves, but she doesn't use it very often and isn't a yeast bread/pizza/pasta maker. I didn't care for cleaning it before I got married and don't suppose I would now but the compact is different. I just thought if it was the better route to go, I'd seriously consider it. I guess I can start a new thread about the Bosch Compact & maybe get more feedback, thank you!
On the other hand, my bread is turning out amazing! It has to be because I'm kneading it by hand and the gluten is really going well, plus I'm able to rise it perfectly in our 75 degree kitchen! Perfect weather here!
In case there is any hesitation let me explain. My KA PRO 500 had only been used about 20 times. I was following a recipe posted by the King Arthur Flour "experts". This was a recipe for a small batch of English Muffin Bread (2 loaves). The "Expert" instructed to crank up the fairly liquid dough as high as it would go and I followed her instructions. The KA broke immediately. It took my DH a month to get the parts shipped in and find the necessary instructions to repair the machine. To this day my machine cannot handle any bread dough. It even has a difficult (scary) time with a basic recipe for cinnamon rolls. Next time I will buy a $2,000 small machine built for small bakeries. This machine is $499 worht of crap!
Although the N50 is officially not listed with a capacity recommendation for pizza dough - trust me - you can make good quantities (1.5kg loads) of good, stiff pizza dough with no problem or concern.
Another kneading machine, excellent for home quantities, would be a Magic Mill / Electrolux DLX2000 (also known as the Assistent).
FWIW, Norm once mentioned that 1.5 lb of flour is a limit for N50.
The N50 is tempting but very pricey, something I'd really have to wait and save for, unless we found a used machine. I'd hate to invest in that with the intent to knead pizza dough and burn it up with no real means to ship it back easily for repairs.
Boy I am an amateur! I just hand kneaded 2 batches and weighed it, it weighs 4 pounds! So I was off by 1/2 the weight...still to make the point that at 65% hydration and 4 pounds the KA Professional HD can't handle it for regular use. I've mixed 5 separate batches that I combined to rise together which would be 10 pounds of dough and maybe more if I used some whole wheat flour, which I'm sure I did. Not sure how the machine would do with a new metal casing/housing.
Regarding hydration. If a mixer suppose to handle less weight the lower the hydration, it varies when a mixer claims how much dough it can mix. I did notice, not even the KA's mention how much pizza dough they can handle. This forum has been so encouraging to hand knead that I'm really enjoying it right now but double batches are a bit tasking to knead, I still desire to improve in that area.
Yes, new they do cost a bomb. Second hand, much more reasonable - although of course you're never quite sure what condition it'll come in.
Mixing as much as you are, is it worthwhile looking at a larger used Hobart, such as the venerable A200? The A200 is a real workhorse in mid-size production and most definitely certified and suitable for cranking out endless batches of pizza dough. These are eminently available on e-bay.
To get your pizza dough more consistent, including accounting for bowl residues etc. can I suggest checking out Tom Lehman's dough % calculator: http://www.pizzamaking.com/dough_calculator.html
As a guide - try about 320-330g dough balls for a 15" pie. 2% salt, 2% oil, no sugar. And while you're there, check out the rest of the pizzamaking forums there - VERY informative to improve one's pizza making skills and frequented by commercial pizzaiolos as well as highly enthused amateurs (such as myself).
Yes, 4 pounds of dough, 65% hydration with some whole wheat in it is well beyond the capacity of KA . It is well known, and has been mentioned multiple times. I assume you also went to speeds higher than 2? With that type of dough, and that much of it, it's a surefire way to kill the machine. In fact I am fairly certain that this is the way most them were offed.
Re: pizza dough - aside from the fact that KA's capacity claims are outlandish, shameful really, there's no such thing as "one pizza dough", since hydrations range wildly, it is as easy to find a recipe using 55% dough as it is 75%.
I have the Pro HD 6qt KA at the moment. I bought it at Costco almost 8 months ago. I use is on average twice a week with mixing anywhere from 3-5lb of bread dough. So far, I have not had a single problem with it. Should I be worried?
No! Worry is the source of a great deal of unnecessary human misery.
Hey Breadman, thanks for your reply. :) I will not worry. So far it's been reliable, but we will see. Happy baking in Mordor!
It's not just "how much", it's a combination of how much, how fast, and what kind of dough. If you mix 5 lb of reasonably hydrated (say 66-69%) bread dough at speed 2 you are probably ok. Personally, I would not do 5 lb, but in a 6 qt mixer it's probably ok. But if you are speeding it up, you are inviting trouble. Similarly, if your dough is denser you should lower your loads.
yup, I originally read the manual when we bought the machine and remembered the 2 speed warning, however, while watching all the youtube videos to learn how from the experts, they all run the machine up as high as it'll go. Not knowing any better, I followed along ignoring the warning...I didn't know that a slow knead was better & tastier ;) We plan to get a metal casing and I promise to not knead on a higher speed than 2 from now on :D The more we discuss machines, the more I'm convinced that hand kneading is my best option. It also seems that mixing one 2 pound batch at a time is better, as it's easier for me to handle, no doubt?
I love to make this dough up the night before and let it rise in the fridge overnight. The flavor is incredibably tastier! All I wanted was an authentic recipe and although I don't have access to the flour required for the recipe, it makes a yummy pizza crust! So this from the fornobravo site is what I use:
Authentic Vera Pizza Napoletana Dough Recipe
Ingredients
By Volume
4 cups Molino Caputo Tipo 00 flour
1 ½ cups, plus 2 TBL water
2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp dry active yeast
By Weight
500gr Molino Caputo Tipo 00 flour
325gr water (65% hydration)
10gr salt
3gr active dry yeast
http://www.fornobravo.com/pizza/pizza_dough.html
I don't doubt there's a way to improve flavor but we're really limited on selection of flours in Mexico. It's a Selecta white flour http://www.aztecamilling.com/azteca/OurBrands.aspx?ID=136
The bag shows that it's good for flour tortillas, cakes and cookies. For every 100g portion it has 10g of protein. I have this to work with an unmarked bag of whole wheat flour that tends to be extremely low gluten, in fact, I have to add gluten so breads will stick together. 1 tbs per 3 cups worked for me yesterday w/a 1/4 cup of this white flour. I've boughten wheat berries but it's very low gluten and a pain in the ( ) to pick the chaff out of. It's actually bird seed, I can't find clean oat groats or wheat berries for human consumption here. :-S However, I did find clean rhye berries and barley berries, which I can grind in the KA mill grinder!!!
Thanks for the tips on dough rising, I'll definately try that, in fact, I wanted to leave it out last night but didn't know if I could!!!!
If my dough is a little sticky after it rises the first time, did I not add enough flour or not knead it long enough? Was it because I put the plastic wrap over the bowl tightly and a little moisture developed inside? We're high desert but we had a little sprinkle yesterday. My hair didn't look too good Sunday but it looks awesome today, so I know climate changes will affect the dough.
Cake flour is almost the worst flour you could use for pizza - unless you want your pizzas to have the consistency of cake! The protein is just too low to develop any decent 'chew' (which is why it's good for cakes!). Adding gluten powder is not the answer, since gluten powder is damaged gluten and makes it more 'gluggy' than chewy. To develop more gluten, try a slightly higher percentage hydration - the water assists in gluten development.
The slightly lower protein flours (typical Italian '00') are generally used in Neopolitan doughs. Unless you're cooking in a wood-fired oven @ 700-900F (or have a very rare electric oven or modified BBQ) you will NOT be able to make Neopolitan pizzas. Hence, stick to NY-style pies or other styles (Chicago etc).
Beg, buy, borrow or import some decent flour - at least 12-12.5% protein content if possible. The '00' nomenclature refers to milling standard - not composition (although Italian '00' tends to be made form certain wheats, hence is of a certain general composition). If you have high protein flour, say 14%, then it is possible in that circumstance to reduce the percentage by cutting it with lower percentage flour, but not to reach '00' levels for the reason I outlined above.
I again recommend heading over the pizzamaking.com and spending some time reading the thoughts/opinions there. Your mouth (and those you feed) will thank you for it! Here's a thread outlining my process/journey from total novice to a point where I'm happy with my oven setup and pies: http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,16889.msg165781.html#msg165781
I do agree with wildman's overnight rise - even up to 3 or 4 days benefits. You do need to use low percentage of yeast for this - but 0.08% is too low (and is not 8/10ths of 1%). Try 0.5-0.8% which *is* 8/10ths of 1% :)
I'm glad I'm not discouraged...I may not have access to all the right elements to make that perfect authentic pizza according to specs but aside from all of my mistakes, the pizzas delightful to make, tasty and a joy for me to produce for my family.
I have never eaten a cake that had the same substance as my pizza dough. Figuring out the % makes my head spin. It doesn't register. I'm about as handicapped in math as one can get. lol everything gets twisted around. It was almost ironic as I was reading on fornobravo tonight because one writter said they don't use a formula anymore, they go by feel. Well, I had found an initial formula and I naturally go by feel. This is how I incorperated whole wheat in the recipe and determind how much "gluggy" to add or not add.
In a real wood fire oven, pizza bakes quickly, I've been baking pizza for over 3 years, first w/a pita bread in a gas oven, then progessed to a pizza dough in a conventional electric oven to now using the convection oven. We could build a wood burning oven, people still build them as their only source of cooking here in Mexico in some regions, but our problem would be finding wood! lol How would a pizza bake in a solar oven? There's a lot of sunshine here! That's probably not going to happen but i'm just saying. If good pizza is determind by how much charcol or burned the bottom or top gets, personally, I don't like it that way. I watched a video on the fornobravo site with the guy using that same recipe I've been using, his dough is wetter than mine. After watching what he produced, I'm pretty happy with the consistency of my dough, even if it is a flour used for cakes or tortillas it says. Tortillas aren't cakey. I don't know what the protein % is in that flour. All I know is that when it bakes directly on a lightly greased air bake aluminum cookie sheet, it comes out plenty crispy depending how long it's left in there. I bake the pizzas for about 12 min on convection 500 degrees, not sure if I can set it higher than that, i'll check and 15 min if it's frozen. I've wanted to put bricks or tiles in the oven, like I'd see on old Juilia Child programs but I'm afraid they may have something in the bricks or tile that could make us sick, idk. We'll look around for a pizza flour.
Actually, I found and joined the pizzamaking forum before I joined here. Well, I've had this site bookmarked for over a year and just recently found the pizzamaking site.
Thank you for trying to help me. I'm glad you've got it down. :)
thanks again! I've been searching online & asking questions, come to find out....well, check out my flour thread here, I'm so excited!! :) http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/30858/pizza-flour
Just a suggestion...
Caputo flour is in most countries - you just need to find the local supplier (or if they are wholesale - which deli or shops they supply to).
That is what I had to do here. I actually rang the local wholesaler and then located a local deli supplier. This is never going to be major supermarket stock, but so worth it for pizza and pasta. P.S. you could ask a local pizza shop if you can't find any leads.
I have the 8 qt ksm8990. I just got it and made a mistake not realizing the 7 qt was the same exact machine, just a slightly smaller bowl. I've seen the 7 qt online for $450 with $50 rebate. I paid $545 for the 8qt and could have gotten the 7 qt PLUS an 8 qt bowl ($58), saved $100 and had two bowls. So please consider this before ordering. They are both the same machine, use same beater blades, etc. I verified with KA. The 8 qt runs fine. Nothing special about it EXCEPT the bowl is so tall that you can't use a splash guard with it. It is the same circumference as my 6 qt mixer, just taller. Flour DOES splash all over! That's the only negative.
Thank you for writing on one of the popular KitchenAid appliances. I see KitchenAid is a trusted name that has taken up almost all the countries of the world. Most of its kitchen appliances are quite good and popular too.
As you already have a KA - you could go dough focused machine and keep your KA for other tasks.
You sound like your dough is the priority so focus on what works for you major interest.
SPIRAL - Lots of TFL members talk about the 10qt spiral as a good option. (If it's the type with a breaker bar - most find the square breaker bar better)
TWIN ARM - most don't go this route due to cost but if I had the space/funds I so want one. (VIDEO) (VIDEO 2)
PLANETARY - if you are a Planetary person, you may want to look into the Hobart C100 (10qt) . They will do everything you can throw at it. My Hobart 10qt does everything from 2 egg whites to large batches of dough. The added benefit for many is the attachment hub of these machines is the same size as the KA so it uses all the Kitchenaid attachments.
You may find this useful...However, that planetary model used in the video is so not rigid enough for what it is mixing...Most tilt head mixers really stuggle with large dough as their tilt mechanism at the neck impedes the structural connection between mixer head and base.