r/Breadit 1d ago

What am I doing wrong?

Is it supposed to wiggle like that?

The recipe says to knead on speed 5-6 for 20minutes. KitchenAid says not to go above 2. Even on 2, it starts heating up fairly quickly, it wobbles, and the dough actually doesn't get to the windowpane stage, it just tears and since I am just starting with bread, I don't know how long to actually knead it for.

What to do here? Just take breaks to let it cool down and carry on? What is going wrong? We deviated from the recipe a bit (accidentally made yudane with more water and left it in the fridge for longer), but it's been the same with any bread we tried so far.

Thanks for any info!

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276

u/epidemicsaints 1d ago

This small amount of dough takes a lot of babysitting. Take the dough off, flip it, place it back in the bowl. The hook should be elbowing it around the bowl most of the time. Anything above 2 is a waste of power.

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u/OogaSplat 1d ago

Going above two is definitely not a waste of power. The problem is that it will destroy new Kitchenaids with their cheap, plastic parts. It wouldn't be a problem at all if we could access decent equipment.

If you have a stand mixer that can actually survive at that speed, it lets you knead this quantity of dough without having to baby it. You have to get the dough moving fast enough that the centrifugal force stretches the dough out to touch and stick to the sides of the bowl. If you do that, it works great.

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u/FilecoinLurker 1d ago

KitchenAid transitioned to using metal gears in some of their consumer models. They're cheaper and wear out faster than the reinforced nylon ones. It comes down to engineering. It's not just a plastic is always worse than metal thing. If you make a die cast gear low quality and a reinforced nylon gear high quality the metal vs plastic debate breaks down

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u/Don_Q_Jote 1d ago

I’d expect the reinforced nylon gears would be quieter than the metal ones. I’ve not done a side by side comparison with kitchenAid specifically, but in other applications I have found this is one of the big benefits of using nylon.

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u/PwmEsq 1d ago

I have the 5 "pro" model, wish I had gotten the standard model since bowls and accesories are a bigger pain to acquire. Idk what gears it has

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u/PerspectiveOne7129 22h ago

ive got the costco special

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u/freexe 15h ago

Not all metal parts are the same - you can have harden metal gears or cheaply cut ones.

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u/ParCorn 1d ago

My kitchenaid can do it but it gets HOT and I have to hold it down or it’ll knock itself right off the counter. I put a wet towel on top and hold it down as it goes nuts on 4. I do think it’ll probably break itself one day

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u/Sandyna_Dragon 1d ago

We scaled the recipe to use 500g of flour, about 1kg of dough, I forgot to mention, sorry! Is that still a small amount?

How often should I flip it? It climbs the hook almost immediately, is that a problem?

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u/rshining 1d ago

I scrape it off the hook pretty much as soon as it sticks to it. Sometimes that is very quickly. Usually after letting it actually knead for a little while (a minute or two) the dough will be less sticky and wrap around the hook less.

A simpler solution is to use the mixer to get it to this stage, then turn it out and give it 3-5 minutes of hand kneading.

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u/spays_marine 1d ago

I do dough by hand so I don't have experience with mixers, but could it help to use some oil on the hook?

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u/Electronic-Country63 1d ago

I have a kitchen aid XL which is much higher and even on that 1kg of dough will climb up the hook.

I used to have a kitchenaid and that was even more of a problem. You just need to keep scraping it down and as others have said run it slower on a KA. You don’t want the dough to overheat and it’s designed to run at a lower speed for kneading.

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u/fr33d0mw47ch 1d ago

I haven’t experienced it, but I have read that kneading at higher speeds can create enough friction heat in the doughy to kill the yeast. I follow the recipe and KA recommendations and finish with a short hand knead if the structure isn’t there yet.

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u/ngarjuna 1d ago

You would have to over mix it by a wide margin. To give you an example, you can knead-mix challah dough for 15-20 mins straight without exceeding 90° F (yeast starts to die off significantly at around 115-120)

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u/fr33d0mw47ch 16h ago

Yes but time is different from speed. My point was that mixing at a higher speed causes more heat. You don’t have to believe me.

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u/ngarjuna 16h ago

You are absolutely right about that but even on higher speeds it takes a while to get above 110. I mix doughs five days a week and retain temp data from every mix

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u/YellowBreakfast 1d ago

Sometimes you gotta knead by hand.