Food enthusiast Amy Bauer (@frontyardveggies) says her new KitchenAid Artisan mixer is useless for kneading bread dough.
It’s a lesson she says she learned the hard way and it had her calling into question why a $400 mixer was so underpowered. Users who responded to her post swore the brand’s older offerings were much more stalwart.
No bread for you
“Hi, can I tell you what has radicalized me today? It’s this mixer,” she says, before panning over to a blue KitchenAid stand mixer. According to the TikToker, she’s had the product for about a year. Furthermore, she adds that it hasn’t seen a lot of use: she’s only utilized it on 20 or so occasions.
Bauer says she recently attempted to make focaccia bread with the product. However, that ultimately ended with a failure as the machine exhibited some strange behavior during the focaccia venture.
“It was bouncing up and down so much, that it was going like that,” she says, taking the top of the mixer in her hand and bobbing it up and down.
At this point in the video, she stated that she even tried to troubleshoot the mixer.
“I tightened the screw, I did all the things,” she states. “I contacted the company and they were like, ‘Yeah you’re only supposed to knead dough for like two minutes. On level 2.’”
Swedish mixing
Bauer expressed her shock at the company’s dip in quality versus a decades-old stand mixer. She says she may have been better off servicing her much older mixer than buying a new one.
“And I have one from the 1970s, I have my mom’s old one. The motor broke. And I was like you know what this one’s 40-something years old, maybe it’s time to get a new one,” she says. “That was the wrong call.”
She said because the newer mixer is “perfectly fine for cookies, etcetera” and is in “perfect condition” she plans on selling it. Following this, she plans on opting for the Swedish brand Ankarsrum’s stand mixer instead.
Her experience differed from reviews
Moreover, she added that folks who reviewed the mixer specifically indicated it could knead bread dough. This, she says, wasn’t the case with her unit: “Even though all the review sites are gonna tell you that it can handle dough. It can’t. My old one could.
Bauer went on to state she’s heard KitchenAid intentionally makes “tiered” versions of its appliances. She also mentioned that different businesses are responsible for manufacturing these different tiers for the brand.
“Apparently the old ones of this exact model were made by the company that now produces the professional series of KitchenAid. Why do they not have the same company make all of them? I don’t know,” she says. “But if I had one guess it would be Capitalism.”
@frontyardveggies Raging against the machine today, both literally and figuratively!!!
♬ original sound – front yard veggies
She speculated that KitchenAid was attempting to turn a profit by selling more units of a lower-quality item.
“Because it’s cheaper for companies to make crappy products,” she concludes. “A one-year warranty on a $400 dollar mixer? Life doesn’t have to be this way.”
Bauer closed out her clip by cautioning people who want to bake bread to steer clear of the KitchenAid Artisan.
Who manufactures KitchenAid appliances?
According to American Appliance Repair, most KitchenAid appliances are manufactured by Whirlpool. This purportedly includes its mixers, and presumably its “Pro Line” series. Although that moniker for mixers has been retired, one Redditor remarked that it lives on in a different name.
In this r/KitchenAid sub, a user said they purchased a Pro Line 7 bowl mixer from KitchenAid. This was despite knowing the product was going to be discontinued. That’s because, according to the Reddit user, the newer Commercial 8 quart used an identical motor.
TikTokers offered help
One commenter who responded to Bauer’s video pointed to a product offered by another user on the app: Mr. Mixer.
“There’s a guy on here, Mr. Mixer or something like that? And he makes the parts KitchenAid stopped putting in their mixers,” they said. “Like a spring and a spacer or something that helps with the bounce.”
Another accused KitchenAid of intentionally designing products to fail.
“Yep. Last year replaced my 20yr old kitchenaid,” they commented. “Nothing wrong with it, just wanted a new color. Broke in 2mo. Planned obsolescence.”
One user also said their older mixer was a much better-built machine. “I just inherited my grandma’s kitchenaid and sent it in for a spa day. She (the mixer) is built like a brick house. They truly don’t make them the same,” one wrote.
The Daily Dot has reached out to KitchenAid via email and Bauer via Instagram direct message.
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