How to Convert a Handmade Bread Recipe to Be Made With a Mixer 

All your videos are so very helpful. Bar none. Thank you. Happy and healthy New Year.

Thank you for this video, Charlie. I have the exact same stand mixer and have been struggling with the same issues that you raise. I have arthritis in one hand so the stand mixer is my preferred method for kneading dough. 🍞🙂

I enjoy every single video of yours – thank you very much for the time and effort – I have a spiral mixer i’m sure this apply to that mixer as
Well – awesome suggestion thank you again –

I tried switching from hand to mixer for pizza dough made with poolish and 70% hydration. I´m still trying to figure out how to do it correctly, but your video sure gives me an idea of what I can do to get it right next time I try. Thank you so much.

i found it, i will try to make your 150g butter recipe with mixer, first combine it all, and let mixer turn, and then add softer butter and tadaa. but the 5h fermantation is stopping me a bit to start. 1-2h okey 😀 5h yes but next time :D:D

Thank you. While I agree that kneading dough by hand is a much better way, there are many reasons why a mixer is the only option ( other than not baking bread at all). Thank you for not belittling those of us whose hands don’t work all that well all the time.

I have also the Heavy Duty model but be cautious with the amount of flour you work with! I broke a part of the gear box which is made of plastic intentionally to brake before the engine! I never go any more above 500 gr of bread flour with an hydration between 62-65%. For banh mi in order to have very light fluffy crumb you should go in number 4 for about 5-6 minutes after the steps 1 and 2 above mentionned! Thank you for your very informative video. I use mine all the time because I don't like to have sticky hand unnecessary. 🙂

There are some superb observations here. Thank you.

This is a much debated subject and this post is not saying that this video is wrong, far from it. Dough is incredibly tolerant and each baker finds their own path to full gluten development. The ideas here might, I hope, give some folk more ideas to choose from.

Some background: After the second World War two speed mixers entered the market and a method called 'Intensive Mixing' was eventually born. Bakers found that a short period of mixing at a low speed to incorporate the dough, followed by higher speed kneading reduced the time needed for bulk fermentation. Bulk fermentation times came down to 15-20 minutes! Less time meant more time to make more products. It carried risks of increased dough oxidisation, which reduces flavour, as well as carrying risks of overheating the dough. Additives were used to reduce the oxidisation (antioxidants would you believe) and water temperature control was used to control the heating issue.

Most of the formal research done is for commercial bakers. Little research seems to have been done on the stand mixer most of us use at home (and smaller restaurant kitchens).

Commercial bakers aim to get full gluten development before the dough leaves the mixer. Autolysis is seldom practiced commercially and in artisan bakeries. Autolysis is very good in getting the gluten development going, but again it requires a little time. Thirty minutes is generally enough. That time also allows the flour to hydrate before kneading starts.

Home bakers and good artisan bakers want a long fermentation period which 'brews' the dough and develops the grain flavours. It's the same as brewing beer. Additionally the gluten will develop over time anyway, this is how no-knead breads work. So, as home bakers we don't need to get full gluten development with the mixer, it will develop in bulk fermentation anyway. We don't need to get that window pane test passed before bulk fermentation.

The Modernist Bread team*, who covered both smaller scale commercial baking and home baking (e.g. everything except full on Industrial Baking), did many tests, with Spiral, Planetary, Oblique and Stand mixers. They concluded that their recommended practice for home bakers using stand mixers, is do a brief mix, keeping any fats back, but not necessarily the salt, or leaven, until the dough is a shaggy mix. Then to allow thirty minutes hydration and autolysis before doing a mix on slow only. That slow mix varied from about one minute to ten minutes depending on the recipe. My experience is that 1-2 minutes on slow is quite enough (see beater below) and that three to four coil folds then during the bulk ferment gets better results. The coil folds gently stretch the gluten sheet as it continues its development.

A word on dough hooks. Some manufacturers like Kitchen Aid use the more modern Spiral Dough hook. It is more efficient that the older style dough hook still used by some manufacturers. However a beater does a better job still for small quantities of dough. The rubberised ones are especially good as they scrape the sides of the bowl. Instead of the dough wrapping itself around the dough hook. The dough is paddled around the bowl with the beater parting the dough stretching it at every pass. This is probably why I only need a couple of minutes, maximum machine kneading. (usually only one minute), but I only make up to a kilo of dough at a time, over that amount I switch to a dough hook and give it longer, but I still use a normal metal beater to mix the initial shaggy dough.

With a little experience it is very easy to see the level of dough development as it mixes. With very wet doughs which don't ball up it is possible to see the gluten, in strands, being stretched out behind the beater when it's ready. Please be careful if using a beater, not all machines are strongly built and some folk I know use rather stiff doughs. I have never tried this with dough hydrations under 65%.

My stand mixer rotates at 42 RPM on the slowest setting. For each rotation the beater makes four stretch and folds in the dough. That is the equivalent of 168 hand stretch and folds per minute.

Are mixers really needed? It's the Bakers call.

A word on bassinage. Gluten develops faster if the dough is dryer. So for hydrations at or over 70% I keep some water back during autolysis and add it with the oil/fats before kneading. That involves some finger squidging I'm afraid.

I bake quite a bit with heritage flours, they have weaker gluten and less of it. Mixers can be too rough at anything more than brief slowest speed machine kneads. And then I need to be careful not to do too many stretch and folds as the dough strength can easily go past its peak (tearing) and give a dough that spreads a little too much in the oven. The same holds for wheat and rye floured breads at anything above about 30% rye.

* Modernist Bread is a massive large format 5 volume publication. Each volume weighs some 5kg. They set up a full research kitchen with a team of some 36 people and tested the hell out of everything bread. Two of the volumes are for recipes from around the world, every one tested and given with advice for different kinds of ovens including Deck, combi and home ovens. Many of those people are from the top of the baking profession in the States. It's not a difficult read, but at the very high price I would say that it is certainly a bread lovers purchase. And, when switching back and forth between the heavy volumes lycra clothing is a definite plus, as are some cool shades!

I reckon Charlie is a darned good stand in 😉

Thanks Charlie, another great video.

(Gosh, I didn't mean to write so much. I do hope it's useful to someone.)

"look at this beauty, its six years old and looks new, because I never use it" 🤣

how about the opposite

Thanks Chainbaker- That tip about mixing it before you turn the machine on- So practical and I would never think to do that, thanks again!

Thank you for the video. I have been using mixer in making bread. For large quantity I use plenary mixer, but for smaller quantity I use the spiral mixer. My problem with spiral mixer is when there is oil in the ingredient and I pour the oil into the dough halfway mixing time, it takes more time and speed to mix them. Do you have any solution for that? This problem does not happen in the plenary mixer. Thank you.

I'm making 100% biga pizza tonight, and before seeing this video, I've basically done the same as in this video (and a bit more by hand). The dough looks excellent, I'll report how the pizza comes out 🙂 Thanks for this conversion, it is sometimes easier to use a mixer, especially with larger quantities (I'm making 6 pizzas, for example, that's almost a kilo of flower).

I have a question – I use my mixer all the time, I make great breads, but it takes forever in the mixer to get fully kneaded. I generally make breads that are about 70% hydration, I preferment 50% of the flour in a poolish, and then I mix it by hand until a dough forms (generally only a few minutes) before putting it in my kitchenaid on speed 3 or 4. And then it can take 30-45 minutes before the dough is actually fully kneaded. I'm don't think I'm over-kneading, my bread rises wonderfully, it shapes fine, it just takes a really long time to knead. It often starts out looking like it's going to knead quickly then becomes wetter and wetter until it finally starts to come back into a ball again and finish kneading. Help!

Don t put the salt and yeast in the same time

For the mixer, try adding the dry ingredients first and then the liquids. We use this method at home, generally for 65% dough using 500 g of flour, and it works on the lowest setting quite well.

Very helpful. It explains why my recipe was not very successful!

this is totally off topic but you should try to make Paraguayan mbeju some time! It is something like a flatbread that is made with cassava starch, and sometimes mixed with corn starch (when is done this way it's called mbeju mestizo).

The spiral hook is better at kneading because the dough doesn't travel up it but, as you noticed, rather poorer at the initial mixing. The G-shaped hood — as supplied with Kenwood mixers, for example — is much better at the initial mix and you can reliably use the chuck-it-all-in and switch on method although putting all the dry ingredients in, switching it on slow and then adding the water in a stream works even better. Either way it will be kneading within 30 seconds, although you do have to watch for the dough making a bid to escape. 😀

Very high hydration doughs such as 120% cocodrilo really need the opposite of very "good" practice: ditch the hook and use the mixing or 'K' paddle, run it faster and longer, 20 mins can be good. It needs this violence to develop any gluten structure at all in all that water!

Hi! I always mix by hand prior to mixer, also.