Hello everyone!
I have had my stand mixer for years and just lately have been mixing lots of bread dough. havent has any problems until yesterday when the recipes called for ones dining on 4 for six mins after kneading on 2 for five. As it was close to five mins in. It started making noises and would get caught when it hits the dough. It’ll spin fine. Only seems to stop and make noises when it catches with the dough. Could it be because it overheated? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
Sounds like your gear is wearing out.
KitchenAids are planetary mixers and they’re not designed for mixing heavy doughs.
Torque is the rotational force from a fixed position. So your mixer head is moving around from a fixed position from the top. The bowl is also in a fixed position. The dough is very heavy. When it scrapes against the side of the bowl, because the bowl is not moving it creates drag. That drag creates resistance so the motor in your mixer has to work harder to move the dough around the bowl. The heavier the dough, the more resistance against the motor.
The gear that moves your mixer head is made of nylon. It’s not designed to withstand the resistance of heavy doughs. When you mix a lot of heavy dough that gear gets stripped out.
It sounds like your gear is beginning to wear out.
The motor also needs to be repacked with grease over time. if your KitchenAid is pretty old it probably needs motor grease as well.
You can replace the gear yourself, there’s videos online that demonstrate how you can repair it. Or you can take it into a shop and have it repaired.
Spiral mixers are the appropriate mixers for heavy doughs. Both the bowl and the mixer head rotate. Not only does this reduces the resistance on the motor, but it reduces friction heat on the dough and actually kneads the dough.
KitchenAid mixers don’t do a good job of kneading dough at all. The dough gets wrapped around the dough hook and stays there. The friction from the drag causes a lot of heat which is really bad for the yeast. The dough ball doesn’t move because it’s wrapped around the dough hook; so the gluten really effectively developed.
With the spiral mixer both the bowl and the center mixer post rotate. This moves the dough, reducing drag, so reducing friction heat. Plus it’s move effective in developing gluten in the dough than a planetary mixer because the dough ball is actually moving.
Spiral mixers are the standard in bakeries that produce a lot of bread type doughs. If you look up Jeffery Hamelman’s cookbook Bread, his recipes all referred to use of a spiral mixer, not a planetary mixer. But I think he’s the rare exception, other cookbook authors dumb their cookbooks down.
I bought a second 6 quart KitchenAid a couple years ago. There was a sticker on the bowl warning that over mixing would void the warranty
