KitchenAid

I've wanted one of these forever. Well, a couple years anyway.



I found it at the City-Wide Garage Sale for $20 (down from $25). It's a K4-B, a model made from 1944 to 1962, so a conservative estimate is it's 50 years old.



47 to 65 years old anyway: show me an appliance in the store, any store, that's probably going to be going strong in 50 years. A KitchenAid stand mixer is the only thing you're likely to come up with.

It's a 4-1/2 quart like the cheapest ones they make today, and probably roughly as powerful. But is six quarts that much more than 4-1/2? And if a 250 watt motor will do what this will, is there something a 575 watt motor will do that this just won't?



There might be, but I don't know what it is.

I only have a paddle and whisk as attachments go. I'm hoping to find another old K4-B with tons of attachments with the main unit worn out or broken on the cheap. Then I have the pasta makers and whatnot and an extra mixing bowl for a song.

As it is, I've already made two batches of slow-rise pizza dough to put in the fridge for later this week. I used Jill Santopietro's recipe from the NYT Magazine. After the first one didn't seem to rise that well, I tried the same recipe but proofing the yeast in warm water instead of adding it with the dry ingredients and using cold water. That, and I used a bit more yeast the second time around. And got results more like what Jill shows in her video.




I've never seen dough so stretchy in my own kitchen. I don't know if I spent a year or two kneading by hand if I'd get to this point or not, but I'm pulling the paddle out of the dough and I have my hand all the way extended overhead and the dough extends from the paddle to the counter.



The other deviation I made from Jill's recipe actually is bread flower. She uses half and half all-purpose and bread flower, but bread flower is all I had around. So I used:

3 cups bread flour
3/4 tsp. active dry yeast (1 tbsp. the second time, proofed in warm water instead of cold)
2-1/2 tsp. sea salt
1-1/2 cup water (105ºF warm the second time)
3 tbps. olive oil
Beat the hell out of it for seven or eight minutes in the KitchenAid, cut in half and raise on a plate oiled with olive oil, covered for 3 hours. Punch down to de-gass and bag it in a quart zipper bag and stick in the fridge for 24 hours to six days.