Stand mixer or Food Processor for dough?

[taxlady]

Which would you choose for making bread dough?

Please tell me the pros and cons of either machine for making dough.

 

[Andy M.]

Stand mixer. It's made for kneading dough, can handle a larger load than a FP. Kneading dough in a FP is OK for a pie crust but not so much for loaves of bread or bagels etc.

 

[Steve Kroll]

I've never made dough in a food processor, but I have used a stand mixer. It seems to work fine, and I like the fact you can just walk away and let it do its thing. Same with a bread machine.

Having said that, although I make bread a couple of times a week, I very rarely use the stand mixer to do so. I find manually kneading bread to be oddly therapeutic and relaxing.

 

[Salvy]

Stand mixer or bread machine. Food processor for pastry or pasta dough. Sal.

 

[jim262]

A food processor that is 11 cups or larger can make good bread or pizza dough and can usually knead it in two minutes or less.

The downside of using a FP is that they do not have as much capacity as mixer and recipes designed specifically for a processor are not as numerous as those for a mixer.

Beth Henperger's "Bread Bible" has a chapter on FP bread with a dozen recipes and some good advice on the procedures used to make them successfully.

A food processor is not my preferred method and I frequently adapt food processor recipes to a mixer, but if you own one, there is no reason to buy the bread machine or stand mixer before you start making bread.

 

[Addie]

I've never made dough in a food processor, but I have used a stand mixer. It seems to work fine, and I like the fact you can just walk away and let it do its thing. Same with a bread machine.

Having said that, although I make bread a couple of times a week, I very rarely use the stand mixer to do so. I find manually kneading bread to be oddly therapeutic and relaxing.

I love kneading bread dough with my two hands. I can go off into another land with my thoughts. Or sometimes I sing. I think that you have to have the feel of the dough. Your hands just tell you when the dough is ready.

 

[julesthegolfer]

bread machine

I've had a bread machine for years. I've tried both my Kitchen Aid mixer and food processor for dough, but always go back to the bread machine for the dough. It is perfect all the time.

 

[taxlady]

I love kneading bread dough with my two hands. I can go off into another land with my thoughts. Or sometimes I sing. I think that you have to have the feel of the dough. Your hands just tell you when the dough is ready.

Not me. I enjoy kneading dough for about 1-2 minutes, then I get tired and bored.

I have friends that used to knead the dough with a stand mixer for the first part of the kneading and finish by hand.

 

[GLC]

It's pretty much a matter of capacity. I don't make single loaves/baguettes of yeast bread, so I use the mixer. It's also convenient to do the initial hand mixing in the mixer's bowl that goes directly to the mixer. I generally am making at least three baguettes, so the kneading is not a large component of the total time, considering the autolyzing period and the multiple rises.

I go to the FP for pasta and pizza. I like it, because I'm usually in more of a hurry during meal prep than in bread making, and I can work without really measuring in the FP, adding liquid until it starts spinning a ball of dough. And neither pasta nor the thin and crispy pizza I want suffer much if I overdo the processor a bit.

All kneading methods, including hand kneading involves trade-offs. With the FP, you have to be careful about over kneading. You'll know if it gets out of hand, because the dough will puddle and won't hold a shape. That's unlikely with a mixer and very unlikely by hand. But the FP can knead so quickly that the flour has less exposure to oxygen and therefore possibly more flavor. You lose some gluten structure to being cut by the FP blade, and I doubt the strands are as long or so well organized as they are with the mixer or by hand. A FP heats the dough, so it might rise more quickly, but at that point, you're back to the risk of overkneading.

Both FP and mixer might have to be gotten out and set up, if they're not always on the counter, and a heavy mixer is more of an operation than a FP. And both have to be cleaned and put away.

 

[Skittle68]

I use my bread machine on the dough setting for everything. It does suck when I want to make more than one loaf at a time, but the convenience of just dumping the ingredients and walking away is worth it to me. I made hot dog buns, and was shaping them while my loaf of bread was being kneaded, and risen, to be put in a loaf pan. The timing was perfect, since they have to bake at different temperatures. I never bake in the bread machine because I like the shape of a traditional loaf better.