Pakpao Nano Bakery Part 4 — Sunmix EVO10 spiral mixer
There’s always the limiting reagent. What’s the thing that’s keeping you from maxing out your number of loaves? Once I solved the issues with the oven and the baker’s table, I was quickly limited to the amount of dough I could mix by hand, especially as I was working with speciality flours like spelt and khorasan. I was also worried that my downstairs neighbors were getting quite irritated with 10+ minutes of 4000 g of “slap and fold” on my bench.
Earlier in the pandemic I bought a Bosch Universal Plus, an awesome all-around mixer. It came with all sorts of attachments, and I bought a specialty dough hook for it as well. While it was great for cookies and even low hydration doughs, it was *terrible* at high hydration dough. The dough would just spin around in the bowl and never actually developed the gluten. Additionally the stem in the center of the bowl made it a huge hassle to clean, and I was ready to murder it every time I used it for sourdough country loaves. (Don’t worry, I didn’t kill it… it’s now on permanent loan to my sister who loves it for her intense cookie-ing).
So off to exploring mixers I went. Again Modernist Bread had a wonderful chapter on the different types of mixers and their benefits. Planetary mixers, spiral mixers, the weird Ank mixer, fixed head, tilting head…. I spent time on my bread forums, asking for help. Everyone had a strong opinion (bakers are an opinionated bunch!), but the serious bread folks kept coming back to a spiral mixer — a “fit for purpose” mixer that is wonderful for bread of all hydration levels.
Where a KitchenAid Planetary mixer has different attachments and then the attachment rotates around the bowl, a spiral mixer only has one attachment (a spiral) which rotates in place, and then the bowl spins around. Most home-sized spiral mixers don’t have a breaker bar (which prevents the dough from climbing up the hook), but Famag introduced it in their IS-8 line a few years ago. Spiral mixers develop the gluten quickly and without too much increase in temperature (and all bread bakers want to control their Desired Dough Temperature DDT).
I struggled with the idea of buying a mixer that only worked with bread dough. What if I wanted to make cookies and cakes? What if I decided that I am bored of making bread? These mixers also weigh 80–100 lbs, so it would “live” out in the living room, which had already ruined my Contemporary Asian decor scheme.
Andrew once again convinced me to go “all in” on my passion and buy a spiral mixer. He figured we could always sell it locally if we got bored of having it.
I settled on a red Famag IS-8, an Italian spiral mixer (with a breaker bar to prevent the dough from crawling up the spiral) with a tilting head and removable bowl. It was a little quirky and very ugly, but it was the best mix of what I wanted in one package. So onto the waitlist I went, as Pleasant Hill Grain had them backordered for a bit.
After a long six weeks, I got the notification that the mixer was in stock and shipping soon. I crowed to my friends on Discord that the Famag IS-8 was on its way. My friend Marc immediately DM’ed me and told me to cancel my order. A new mixer was coming out called the Sunmix EVO10, and it was even better than the Famag. It was also 40% more expensive but also red and much prettier. It was also a fixed bowl and fixed head, which made me really nervous about cleaning, especially since I hated cleaning the Bosch so much.
I hemmed and hawed, but Marc has never steered me wrong. So I splurged and went back onto a waitlist with Pizza Goods. I bought the same stand as what was recommended for the Famag IS-8 on Pleasant Hill Grain. And then I purchased a Teiger dough cloth for cleaning and a sponge for soaking up the cleaning water.
I love this mixer so much. I completely underestimated the happiness it would bring me to “automate” the mix step of my bread making. I still have some hands-on “stretch and folds” after the initial mix so I can distribute the heat and feel the dough. But I don’t miss the massive arm workout or the gross sticky feeling all over my hands as the dough is initially coming together.
It makes quick work of developing gluten, is quiet, and makes a cute pumpkin shape as the dough is coming together. It runs on Linux, and as you boot it up, the Linux penguin appears which also makes me laugh.
I’ve learned that you need to put in the water first. I’ve been playing with the RPM speeds during autolyse and mixing, and my friend Tommy has gotten one as well and has helped me with some experiments with mix times too!!
I’ve mixed up to 7200g of high hydration dough, 5000g of low hydration bagel dough, and more, and it’s never given me a problem. I can’t wait to see what adventures I whip up with this piece of machinery. So with some level of scale achieved, I now need some branding and marketing…. Till next time!
