Best way to knead bread dough?

[BobinCA]

Recently I doubled up on a bread recipe and I was using my KA Heavy Duty stand mixer to knead the dough. I was having a terrrible time keeping the dough from "climbing up" the dough hook. There was just too much dough!!
It was going up and over the dough hook shield and I had to keep turning off the machine and pushing the dough down. FInally I had to resort to doing the recipe in two batches. Also, the motor was getting quite warm.
Should I be considering another brand of stand mixer, or should I have to resort to kneading by hand? And finally, what is the best way to knead....by hand or by dough hook?
Bob A

[Jock]

As a general rule your mixer will accommodate half of the bowl capacity in Lbs of dough. So, if your bowl capacity is 5qt it will accommodate 2.5 lb of dough. Any more will cause the motor to overheat and I have seen gear oil dripping from the head in some cases.

Kneading by machine just takes the sweat out of the process. You can achieve the same result by hand but it usually takes more time and burns more calories! The mixer is especially useful when you are working with a wet dough which can be difficult to handle on the bench.

Jock

[Andy M.]

Rub a bit of oil on the top end of the dough hook before attaching it to the mixer. That will slow the dough's climb up the hook.

[valvanite]

funny story, while where on the subject

2nd day of my new job as pastry chef, i was making a bread dough and put it in the mixer.

5 mins later the spiral snaps from the top most part of the spiral,

head chef was on holiday, and all the sous could say was 'wow you really snapped that didnt you

$825 for a new spiral from the U.S!!!!

not a good start

[chadgkiss@yahoo]

murphy cam back and bit ya did they fire you?

[KyleW]

Inspite of their name, KA Heavy Duty mixers have a suprisingly small motor. I had one and it had a 350 watt motor. This is great for cookies and cakes, but will bow down before a 'normal' bread dough, let alone a doubled batch. I now have a Kenwood Major Chef with a 650 watt motor. If you bake a lot of bread it's worth it to get a nice, big motor.

The hand v. mixer choice can be effected by the flour you're using as well. If you are using AP flour, kneading by hand can be every bit as effective as kneading in the mixer. If you are using bread flour, or high gluten flour, you are unlikely to be able to develop the gluten by hand. The flour is too 'strong' and you need the mechanical force of the flour to develop the gluten.

Just one man's opinion.