Getting a Dough Mixer? What you need to Know!

With the increased focus on healthy living, more and more people are trying to avoid harmful toxins in their diets.  As a result, many people are looking to do more baking at home so that they can know exactly what is going into their bread and other baked goods.  Making your own cookies, pizza dough, muffins and bread is a great way to ensure that your family is not getting harmful chemicals and preservatives.  The key, of course, is to start off with ingredients that are toxic free.  Next, you are going to need a dough mixer!

First, you will consider what kind of dough mixer you want to get.  Dough mixers come at a variety of prices and strengths.  What you need largely depends on what you are going to make.  Want to make some “deceptively delicious” cookies or muffins for your kids? A simple hand held dough mixer or a light – duty stand mixer will do. 

But, if you want to handle things like making bread or pizza dough, you are going to need a mixer that packs a punch.  Bread dough mixers need power, weight and speed.  Having multiple accessories is also great, but if your primary goal is to make bread, you mostly want a bread dough mixer with a strong dough hook.

For these tasks, only the toughest of mixers will work.  Unfortunately, that means that you are going to have to spend some money up front.  If you are able to swing it though, you won’t regret it.

My pick for a dough mixer is the Viking professional mixer.  It is as close to a commercial dough mixer as you are going to get without spending thousands. I purchased mine over five years ago, and still use it every day.  My husband likes to joke that the engine in it is more powerful than his first car.  In truth, he probably isn’t all that far off base.  This isn’t a mixer to use when your two year old just finally went down for a nap – the powerful engine is on the noisy side. When you turn this baby on, you KNOW you are working with a quality product. 

The Viking dough mixer comes with a regular mixing attachment, a whisk and a heavy duty spiral dough mixer blade.  You can also purchase other attachments.  My husband pops the blender on top to make protein shakes with crushed ice in no time.  I like to make my boys nitrate-free sausage with the sausage making attachment.  The one I don’t have that I want: the pasta attachment.

Because the Viking stand mixer has a splatter control guard, I am even able to let my four and five year old boys in on the dough mixing process without working about their fingers.  They love making cookies and bread alike.  The best part – my boys don’t even consider buying bread or cookies from the store.  In fact, dinner tonight is homemade pizza.  The dough – made not with a specialty pizza dough mixer but with my trusty Viking.

I have been cooking…well, all my life.  I got serious about it when I began collecting cookbooks when I was 15.  By the time I was 23 I was comfortable enough to host my parents 25^th wedding celebration with a party for all their family and friends.  I did ALL of the cooking, save the three tiered wedding cake.  (Cake decorating – not my forte!)

Because I am a power cooker, I have tried just about every appliance that there is.  If I was not going to us the Viking dough mixer, my next choice would be the top of the line Kitchen Aid stand mixers.  Now, the light ones won’t do!  My mom (who doesn’t bake) has the cheapest Kitchen Aid stand mixer.  When I visited for Christmas and tried to make some bread, I was very disappointed that it couldn’t handle it.  It worked fine for cookies but the dough was just a disaster.  I was worried I was going to have to buy her a new dough mixer because by the time I was done with it I could smell the engine burning.

The high end Kitchen Aid dough mixers, work like a champ.  My sister has one that she loves.  While it is not quite as powerful as the Viking, it still get’s the job done.