Hamilton Beach6 Speed Electric Stand Mixer with Stainless Steel 3.5 Quart Bowl, Planetary Mixing, Tilt-Up Head, 300W Motor, Black (63325)

I waited to write a review until I had used this mixer for several months. Six months of use later, making bread weekly, I give it a "thumbs up." I purchased this, and use this, only to bake bread -- french style baguettes. When I purchased it, it was unclear from prior reviews how well this worked for bread making. My usual recipe is for three baguettes, and it uses 510 grams of bread flour. This mixer has no problem with that amount. It could clearly do more, if I needed. It works great, and it takes me only about 10 minutes from "get it out of the cabinet and ready" to "dough done," to make my bread. The rest is just dough rising time. I did not want a huge Kitchen-aid mixer, nor need one. This does the job, and seems like it will keep doing the job for many years. It is reasonably light in weight, easy to store in the cabinet, and easy to set up; it stays stable on the counter while in use. In summary, it is extremely easy to use. I like simple and easy.Some reviewers have had problems with the dough hook "corroding in the dishwasher." I have not -- but I never put it in the dishwasher. Be reasonable! It takes all of a minute to rinse the dough hook (and the bowl) in the sink, and then put the mixer, hook and bowl away for next week. The hook works well for making bread dough, and shows no corrosion, and no wear of any kind after six months of frequent use.Okay, it is not the counter-top display beauty that the Kitchen-aid mixer might be . But it works just fine for me, just making bread dough.Addendum: Four years later, after many weekly uses making bread and pasta, it still works perfectly. Highly recommendedAnother Addendum: I was asked for my baguette recipe. This one is really good. Here it is:For three 8 oz Baguettes: 550 gr. flour (King Arthur Bread Flour). 385 ml warm water (use a kitchen scale to measure flour and water); 1 TBS of salt. 1 TBS of yeast (SAF brand instant yeast -- using this great yeast doe make a difference). 1/2 TBS or less of sugar (optional, it speeds the rise, but the dough rise will rise well without it, just take a few min longer or so).Put dry ingredients in mixer bowel and stir with mixer. Add warm water (water should be about 120 F, like warm bath water; use a finger or a thermometer if your finger does not work normally) , mix on speed setting 2 for about 5 minutes. Remove dough and place dough in an oiled bowel, turn it over so it is coated with oil on all sides. Cover with wrap and let rise for an hour or more, until over twice the original volume.Place risen dough onto an oiled counter top. Smash it down, and fold it over. Divide the dough into three equal portions. Take each portion and press it flat onto the oiled counter top, press it into a square or rectangular shape, about 6 by 8 inch in size. Roll the flattened square of dough up, like a a scroll. Pick the roll up, and work the roll (a big "dough dong") out to about 12 inches -- just squeeze and hang it in your hands to stretch it out. Place the elongated 12 inch or more dough roll, with the seam side down, l onto a baguette pan, or onto parchment paper. Do all the three pieces the same. Cover lightly with wrap, and let rise for an hour or more -- it should rise to over 2 times the original size. Start pre-heating oven while the the dough baguettes rises.Place the dough baguettes into a well pre-heated oven at about 490 to 520 degree (depending on your oven and altitude). I use a pizza/bread stone, and put the bread on top of the stone. But any big baking sheet will work. Before placing in oven, spray the bread with a heavy mist of water. Spray more water into the hot oven as you place the bread in -- this gives the steam to help the bread rise a bit in the oven without crusting immediately in the hot oven. (Traditional French ovens are steam injected.) After ten minutes, turn the oven down to 475. Cook about 25 min, until nice and browned.Every friend I have shared this recipe with loves the results -- and they ask for the recipe after tasting my bread. Good luck. It takes about three tries to get the feel, and get it "just right." It takes me 10 minutes to make the dough, from the time I pull out the mixer, to the time I put it away.After the baguettes have cooled a bit, I cut them in half and put them in a zip lock bag, and freeze them. When needed, they defrost in about 20 minutes; I then reheat them in the oven for ten minutes or so. Reheated, they taste like crispy baguettes fresh from the French oven!

I am taking culinary classes for baking and I quickly realized that if I was going to actually learn anything, I needed to practice at home, and to do that, I needed a "planetary" mixer.In class our mixers range from industry grade KitchenAid to Volrath to Hobart -- with the last two being the machines that do the the severe high yield cookie and bread dough jobs.This was an intro class, and we did a little of everything, but I was most interested in bread. Since I am very serious about learning to bake, I began to explore and price planetary stand mixers. Since I am on a strict budget and not absolutely positive that I would continue the class, my goal was to find an "entry level" stand mixer with the planetary mixing action.To be clear, planetary refers to the action of whatever mixer utensil is at work in the bowl. For instance, if you are using the paddle tool, the paddle will be spinning in the bowl much in the same way an egg beater spins, however, there is a second motion in which a separate gear orbits the bowl as the paddle spins -- so, there is a double action with a planetary mixer.I bought this at $79, based on the reviews and I honestly felt that it would be fine for practice and that eventually if my passion for baking continued, I would just run this into the ground for the time being. I sort of took the attitude that if things didn't work out, I wasn't out a huge investment and if it broke, well, it WAS the cheapest mixer I could find...BUT. WOW!I am NOT a baker but a novice baking student and I can honestly tell you that I have been beating the heck out of this thing and I cannot kill it!At home I have made 14 dozen lean dough french rolls, 8 dozen enriched dough rolls, 7 Pear Frangipane Tarts and several cookie batches.Now I mainly want to talk about the bread since there is a lot of static on here about how this mixes bread dough and the reason I think that this little mixer needs some respect is because -- as I practiced, I DIDN'T know what I was doing. I was kneading dough with the bread hook way too long and often at a higher speed.However, bread dough can be very forgiving in the oven and all came out fine -- but the amazing thing is that I abused this mixer out of ignorance and it just kept going.The bread recipes each called for 18 oz. of flour with one (Lean French) using 100% Bread Flour the other (Enriched) with a 12/6 oz. split of bread and AP flour.Due to my inexperience and some experimenting. I sometimes kneaded the dough for up to an hour when only 10 or 15 minutes was needed. This made the mixer very warm and I could hear it labor on occasion, but even now it works as well as the day I took it out of the box. It is made of plastic with a metal bowl and suction cup feet. It isn't any louder than the mixers at school. It has a 3.5 qt. stainless steel bowl which is a little small, so although it was good for me to practice, I will eventually upgrade to a higher capacity mixer. However, at 300 watts -- which is a little low, power-wise -- it never seemed to struggle as I assumed it would. It would start to labor a bit and then recover as if it shifted gears.This mixer turned out to be a pleasant surprise and even after I upgrade, I will be keeping this little guy around as both a back-up and a secondary mixer if I get on a roll. If you are a hardcore baker with intense high yield formulas, you should probablypass.

..until you try to take the beater out to wash it. I just reviewed the instruction manual available on line to see what I was missing. What was I missing? Nothing! To get the beater off the mixer - pull. No release of any kind. (Inserting it is also a bit tricky.) I don't think of myself as a weakling, but this is pulling the beater off is a CHALLENGE of strength. Other than that, I am very satisfied with the mixer's performance.