Adventures with my Ankarsrum Mixer

[BakerAunt]

I saw some questions about how the Ankarsrum works on cakes. Be aware that I do not bake butter cakes anymore, as both my husband and I need to limit saturated fats. However, I do bake oil cakes, and I tried the mixer today on "Skillet Pumpkin and Apple Cake," a recipe by Becky Krystal that was featured in a Thanksgiving segment at The Washington Post.

I used the dough roller and the dough knife, just as I do when I mix bread dough. I started by beating the two eggs with the sugar. I set the mixer at the fifth speed and mixed for three minutes. It did a nice job. I mixed in the oil at a lower speed (about 3), then stopped it, added the pumpkin, and mixed it in at 3. For the flour, I set the speed to 1, and with the mixer running, added it by large spoonfuls. I had the dough roller positioned on the side, a little bit away from the bowl for the other tasks. Once I added the flour, I needed to move the arm more toward the center, but the mixer quickly incorporated it.

With most of my oil cakes, I do not use a mixer when adding the flour. I instead use a cake whisk and do it by hand, since overmixing can make for a tough cake. However, given how quickly the Ank incorporated the dry ingredients at a low speed, I will try it again, as long as the final cake texture comes out well. I'll add a note after we sample slices for dessert tonight.

[BakerAunt]

The cake texture was wonderfully light. I had made it a couple of years ago and don't recall such wonderful texture. I'm not sure whether to attribute that to the Ank or to the different kind of pie pumpkin that came from a different farmers market vendor. I will need to try some other cake recipes.

[skeptic7]

Thank you. Is an oil cake like a muffin recipe? Do you worry about glutein development? I can't remember making an oil based cake. I've made sponge cakes with no oil except for the egg yolks.

[BakerAunt]

I'm sure that part of it is gluten development, but that would be true for butter cakes as well. I remember reading an article, I think from Bon Appetit before they paywalled everything, where the writer warned against overmixing oil-based cakes as they would become tough. I think that Cass, when he helped a member on the Baking Circle with an oil for butter substitution also said that oil cakes should not be overmixed. I don't know the science behind it, but your reference to muffins, which are usually made with oil, would be another example of not overmixing.

[BakerAunt]

I baked a loaf of Buttermilk Pompanoosuc Porridge Bread yesterday. It's my second time with the Ankarsrum mixing and kneading for this recipe. I'm now using a large, deep spoon to add the flour; the spoon probably holds about a generous half cup. With the spoon, it is easier to distribute the flour as the bowl moves below it. Initially, I had to help the mixer get started on the kneading, which instructions say can be the case, by using my large spoon from adding the flour to move the dough past the knife and pedestal, but soon it was doing well on its own. Bread seems to require about 10 minutes of kneading on the second speed.

I have posted the recipe.

[skeptic7]

Thank you. I like hearing the details of your using the Ankarsrum mixer. Overall do you like this better than your old mixer?

[BakerAunt]

Yes, it's 100% better. It is easier to control how the dough mixes and kneads. It is also a lot quicker to clean up. I'm not sure how well it would work on frosting, but on the rare occasions when I make it, I always used my hand mixer.

I'm glad that the details are interesting to people here at Nebraska Kitchen. I know that some people on the now defunct Baking Circle had the Ankarsrum and liked it quite a lot, but no one ever discussed using it, and those were the details that I needed.

[Mike Nolan]

I see a fair number of posts from Ank users on reddit, most of the users are quite happy with it.

[BakerAunt]

Today, I tried two loaves of Whole Wheat, Rye, and Semolina Bread, using the Ankarsrum to mix and knead it. This is Len's recipes, with a couple changes I made and doubling it. I will list my ingredients and amounts at the end of this post. I initially held back 86 g of the bread flour, but all was required. I kneaded it for 8 minutes, then another two, then two more. The house was cool, so I needed to add 15 minutes to both rises. The loaves had lovely oven spring, much more than with my previous mixer. I achieved similar heights with this bread when I baked a loaf in Florida. At the time, I attributed that to the humidity there, but I was also using a bread machine, which may have done a better job of kneading. Perhaps this is another example of how the Ankarsrum does a better job of hydrating the flour than my last mixer did.

List of ingredients:
115 g semolina flour
117 g dark rye flour
229 g whole wheat flour
2 Tbs. milk powder
286 g bread flour
1 1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 cup water
3 1/4 tsp. yeast
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
2 Tbs. honey
2 eggs
6 Tbs. olive oil

[BakerAunt]

Today, I used my Ankarsrum mixer to mix and knead a new recipe:

https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/apple-cider-oatmeal-bread-recipe

Details on the recipe itself are in the baking thread for March 1. I am finding that a rest during mixing, while important with my other stand mixers does not seem to work well with the Ankarsrum, because it confuses me on how much additional flour is needed. When I bake this recipe again, I will probably soak the oats for about 5 minutes with the liquid ingredients before adding the yeast. I will then omit the initial resting time, which I think was to hydrate the oats.

I found that the roller and knife did a good job of kneading in the chopped apples and walnuts, something which my older mixer did not do well.

[Mike Nolan]

Bakeraunt, am I mis-remembering or did you recently post about getting a set of accessories to go with your Ank mixer?

If you did, what do they do?

[BakerAunt]

Mike, I haven't bought any accessories for my Ankarsrum just yet. It did come with an additional hard plastic mixing bowl, which is a kind of doughnut shape. A post us attached in the center of the base, and that bowl goes over it. Two sets of beaters also came with it, one for beating egg whites, and another for cakes. Neither set was recommended to be used with cold butter. The joined pair of two beaters snaps onto the post. I think that I wrote about it when I made my birthday cake, as I had to beat together the eggs and sugar and the oil and vanilla. However, I moved that mixture to a bowl before adding the flour, fruit, chocolate chips, and nuts by hand.

I have been tempted by the pasta roller and cutter attachments.

Recently, Ankarsrum has introduced two new beater sets. One is whisks, the other is beaters that can work on cold butter. However, it requires buying a metal bowl that like the hard plastic one is a doughnut shape. The new beaters cannot be used with the plastic bowl. The new beaters were introduced in a special initial offering on Pi Day, with only 200 available, and they sold out within two hours. The beaters will become widely available in a later release. I think that they did the special release on Pi day to call attention to it for making pie crust.

I'm not sure that it would make sense for me to get the new beaters, as I would also need to buy the special metal bowl. I rarely have occasion to cream butter.

One intrigues me about the pasta roller is that it would be nice to make my own lasagna noodles, and it might also be a way of rolling out cracker dough without a sheeter. King Arthur sells the pasta roller along with a pasta cuter that does noodles.

[Mike Nolan]

I have the pasta kit (roller, narrow and wide cutters) for my KA mixer, we used to use them frequently but have been cutting back on pasta lately because of carbs. For lasagna I just take the dough out of the roller, cut it to fit the pan, poach the noodles briefly, and then build a lasagna.

I've use my sheeter to sheet out cookie and cracker dough a few times, it makes sheets that are nearly 12 inches wide, the pasta roller makes 6 inch wide dough, but mine is old enough and has been taken apart once or twice and doesn't do full-width sheets very well any more. I keep thinking one of these days I'm going to use the sheeter to try to make strudel dough, but I didn't go apple picking last fall.

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