On 5/27/06, Barbara > wrote:
>
>
> I have the Professional 600 Series 6 qt. I made a "double batch" of
> dough requiring 3 cups of bread flour and 3 cups whole wheat.


If the double batch requires 3 cups of bread flour and 3 cups of whole
wheat, that is a rather small double batch. Different recipes, and
different people, set the size for a double batch at different points. Like
"hot" in "hot sauce", there aren't any hard and fast rules here which is why
I asked about the size of your double batch - I was concerned other people
would double their batch size without doing the math.

A quick look at the KA web page,
http://www.kitchenaid.com/catalog/ca...categoryId=310 shows that the
Pro 600 6qt mixer has a "flour power" of 14 cups. However, when using all
or part whole grain flour, they suggest de-rating that to 1/2 of the full
size. So, with the recipe you mentioned, the limit would be 7 cups of flour
in the Pro 600 6qt model. In short, the recipe is pretty close to the edge
of what the Pro 600 can handle, and would be beyond what many of their
mixers can safely handle on a regular basis.


The KA came with a recipe booklet and a recipe for Whole Grain Wheat Bread
> calls for 5-6 cups whole wheat flour, which makes 2 loaves. The booklet
> DOES say not to add more than the maximum amount of flour specified but
> gives the reason as "a dry loaf will result".


There are two separate issues here. Many recipes tell you to add flour and
knead until the dough is silky smooth and feels like a baby's bottom. If
the dough isn't dry enough, it will climb up the dough hook in a KA. You
can deal with that using a chopstick to push the dough down, or by adding
flour. If you add too much flour, the loaf will be dry and crumbly. In
fact, you are better off, for most breads, with a much wetter dough and
dealing with the dough climbing issue in ways that don't involve adding more
flour. As Beatrice Ojakangas says in her "Great Whole Grain Breads" book,
"dough would rather be a bit too wet than a bit too dry".

The other issue is not exceeding the rated capacity of the mixer. If you
get a Hobart mixer's manual, they specify the capacity of the mixer by
weight, and it changes based on what you are mixing. You can beat a lot of
egg whites, mix a lot of cake batter, make less wet bread dough, and much
less pizza, bagel or challah dough. The thickness of the dough, often
measured by it's hydration, gives you an indication of how hard the mixer
will have to work to mix the dough. And, even with a commercial mixer, the
limits that are well below the maximum volume of the mixer because dough is
harder to mix than egg whites.

KitchenAid seems to have decided that their typical customer can't cope with
the density of the dough charts, so they simplify and say, "The flour power
of this mixer is 14 cups". It's probably a reasonable simplification for
most of their customers.



Under "Bread Making Tips" it says to "NEVER use recipes calling for more
> than 12 cups all-purpose flour or 8 cups whole wheat flour when making dough
> with a 6-quart mixer."


That's pretty much what I said. They may have changed that over the years,
the current web page says 14 cups of all purpose flour for this model.

The manual also warns you not to make more than two batches back to back,
and to let the mixer cool for 45 minutes after the second batch.

Mike