There are probably more kitchen tools that promise to lighten your workload (and are ultimately a waste of money) than any other sub-category of consumer goods. More than garage tools, more than lawn and garden tools.
The KitchenAid stand mixer has achieved Holy Grail status, though, not because it’s new (its iconic design dates to 1937) , and not because of marketing, but because it legitimately makes cooks’ lives easier in the kitchen.
Like a particularly beautiful pickup truck, my very own KitchenAid Artisan has expanded what I’m able to do in the kitchen.
In situations where I could maybe limp through a task like a family sedan carrying a Christmas tree, the stand mixer makes it simply easy, and I find myself with fewer lazy excuses when it comes time to make something rather than order out.
As of December, I’ll have had it for four years. And it’s barely broken in.
Kitchenaid Artisan Mixer Review: Putting the king in baking
More than any other kind of food, I’ve mixed up a lot of bread doughs in my Artisan. There was the San Francisco Sourdough recipe that I thought, if anything, would strain the Artisan’s 325 watt motor, but it powered right on through on medium speed.
Then there was the fairly dry Irish brown bread dough, with a few heaping spoonfuls of molasses for motor-choking thickness. No problem there, nor for the soda bread recipe with cups and cups of wheat bran, wheat germ, oat bran, and flour all thrown into a mass.
The KitchenAid made quick work of the Hilton’s famous DoubleTree Chocolate Chip Cookies, as it did the Ghirardelli and Toll House cookie recipes, plus orange cranberry muffins, lemon poundcake, and double chocolate caramel walnut brownies.
Hand mixers have their place, more for watery batters than thick doughs. But even with thin, coarse mixtures of cornbread batter, the stand mixer was more reliable in blending every clump of dry mix. With hand mixers, I’d sometimes bite into a lump of dry, unmixed powder.
go on, get attached
Ten motor speeds speeds allow me to dial in whatever’s needed for the recipe at hand. I’ve used hand mixers with three and five speeds before and been frustrated when I needed a speed between two settings.
Too fast with sloppy, liquid batters or doughs with the liquid ingredients, such as milk, eggs, or oil, and it’ll splatter everywhere like you’re in a Tom & Jerry cartoon. A mixer needs to let you make slight adjustments to the speeds. Too slow and you may as well be using a spoon.
There’s no problem with the Artisan being either not fast enough or not slow enough. The lowest speed setting is downright gentle. The fastest speed setting is powerful enough to frighten grizzly bears, and probably some astronauts, too.
Typically I’ll begin on a slow speed setting of two or so to mix the liquid ingredients into the dry without splashing, and then crank up the power as needed.
Included as attachments are the coated flat beater, coated dough hook, and wire whisk, plus an anti-splash pouring shield that fits around the bowl. The shield works well for when you have to add ingredients slowly while mixing.
Otherwise you can end up looking like you were just in an old-timey pie fight. The three attachments are all I’ve needed for the breads, cookies, and waffles I’ve made, and I’ve never stood by helplessly unable to complete a task because one of the three didn’t suffice.
There’s a ludicrously comprehensive catalog of aftermarket attachments you can buy from KitchenAid to expand your uses for your mixer, from ice cream makers to pasta makers.
For most of them, you just unscrew the shiny, round KitchenAid emblem on the front and mount. It takes about as long to mount an attachment like that as it does to read this sentence.
Size matters
There’s also the Artisan Mini, available with a 3.5 qt. bowl. But even if you cook for one or two most of the time, I recommend stepping up to the Artisan with the 5 qt. bowl. It’s the perfect size for most standard recipes for loaves of bread and batches of cookies, in my years of experience.
The sides of the bowl are high enough so that batter doesn’t splatter over the sides, even when on the highest speed, assuming you know better than to speed up the machine before the attachment tool is already lowered into the dough on a lower speed.
With the integrated handle the bowl is easy to lift, even when it’s full and heavy. Because it’s stainless steel, the Artisan’s bowl is dishwasher safe. I’ve tossed mine in the dishwasher many times without incident.
KitchenAid Artisan vs. KitchenAid Professional
There are differences between the Artisan and the Professional, the latter of which uses a bowl-lift mechanism rather than a tilt head. It also happens to look like a plucky little Star Wars robot with its two arms outstretched and holding the bowl.
Given the internet’s propensity to drive the oftentimes vague and semi-mystical notion of “quality,” with often threadbare phantom reasoning and hard proof, the regurgitated opinion that there’s gulf of difference between the Artisan and Professional is overblown.
There’s no doubt the Professional has a more powerful motor—475 watts versus the Artisan’s 325 watts—and would stand up to the rigors of frequent, all-day mixing of very thick, dry doughs more effectively. But for the enthusiast home cook, the Artisan is more than enough.
KitchenAids have built their reputations over decades of anecdotes and long-term tests by all manner of professional reviewing outlets, and the Artisan is no exception. As far as kitchen equipment goes, KitchenAids are the unchallenged poster child for durability and quality.
People don’t leave them out on their counters because they’re as big as a goose. They’re a retro-cool status symbol that brandishes, “Yup, I bake, and I’m in it for the long haul.”
The Professional’s bowl-lift mechanism isn’t that much slow on its own than the Artisan’s tilt head. You turn a protruding arm to raise or lower the bowl. It’s when you have to remove or add an attachment that the Professional slows you down.
The Artisan’s tilt-head mechanism allows you to swap attachments in just a few seconds. Detaching an attachment from the Professional means playing a bit of a game of Operation to get it out of or into the bowl, especially if the bowl is full of ingredients.
Professional is also larger and heavier, which might frighten off those with limited storage capacity.
The Artisan is available in 39 colors, whereas the Professional comes in a choice of 13. The smallest Professional is 5 qt., and you can get a 7 qt. model if you need more capacity (something the Artisan doesn’t offer).
KitchenAid Artisan vs. KitchenAid Classic
KitchenAid has put together a comparison page breaking down the similarities and differences in more granular detail than we’ll go into here. The gist is that the Artisan is a mid-range stand mixer, whereas the Classic occupies lower position in the KitchenAid range.
The Classic has a 275 watt motor, compared to the Artisan’s slightly stronger 325 watt motor. I found the Artisan’s stainless steel bowl, which has a handle, much more easy to use than the Classic’s non-handled, brushed steel bowl. The steel finish made no difference to me, though.
The Artisan comes in 39 colors. The Classic comes in two: black or white. They’re the same size, and both come with the coated flat beater, coated dough hook, and wire whisk attachments. The Artisan also gets the anti-splash pouring shield, though you can buy it later for the Classic.
The price difference between the two barely exists, especially when they’re both on their frequent sales, which KitchenAid likes to organize around major sales holidays. Given that you’ll have it for years and years, I recommend nabbing the Artisan. It’s worth the money.
The last scoop
For somebody who likes the tactile experience of hand-mixing a bowl of dough, hearing no cacophonous noise except the gentle scrapes of wooden spoon on bowl, it took me a while to warm up to using any kind of stand mixer.
It was only when I began to dive into the habit of experimenting with lots of types of bread that I got on board fully with the idea of an electric stand mixer. Baking, and bread making especially, is an endeavor of minute degrees and grams.
I couldn’t risk bits of unmixed dough that would ruin the whole loaf, and the simple hand-stirred spoon struggles with dry, thick bread doughs. Because I’m the skeptical sort, it took two whole loaves to convince me that this was, leaps and bounds, a serious kitchen upgrade.
All the parts feel very durable, and the mixer weighs a hefty 26 lb. So if any jealous family members or roommates fall helplessly in love with it, they’ll have to work for it. Watch out for home bakers who see your KitchenAid, get a gleam in their eye, and suddenly start hitting the gym.
