Cuisinart Update

It might be as simple as learning to work with a new appliance — or perhaps the Cuisinsart mixer does not have a comparable mixing action and bowl design with the KitchenAid. But I seem to be having trouble getting my entire batch of dough to mix into a nice ball, where the mixer leaves unmixed flour at the bottom of the bowl. There is also a lot of dry flour build up on the side of the bowl, none of which is good. As a lazy baker (someone who tries to be really efficient so that I can focus on the aspects of my hobby that are really fun and have the biggest impact), I don’t want to spend a lot of time messing with my mixer after I have weighed my ingredient.

In an attempt to stop this from happening today, I “mixed” the dry ingredients and the water using the kneading attachment in my hand. After weighing the dry ingredient, I added and weighed the water and then gave it a good mix before attaching the kneading arm and turning on the mixer for 10 minutes. After the cycle was complete, I took a look under the dough and there was still dry, unmixed flour. Blah. I mixed it in my hand and turned the mixer back on for another five minutes, and it all eventually was done. Then, six folds and back into the bowl for bulk fermentation.

I can see that the bottom of the Cuisinart bowl does not have as deep an indent as the KA bowl. Does that matter?

This needs a great deal more testing until I either figure out how to make it work easily — or decide that the Cuisinart isn’t the mixer for me. More to come.

Today’s batch is Whole Wheat Pine Nut (because I had pine nuts in the cupboard). Sounds good!