My KitchenAid stand mixer has always been my favourite appliance. I upgraded to the KitchenAid Artisan stand mixer a few years ago and I love it, but over the past year I’ve found myself doubling batches of cookie dough and bread dough so the 5-quart bowl isn’t big enough. Now that I’ve tested out the KitchenAid Professional bowl-lift stand mixer, I know what my next upgrade is going to be. Not only is this stand mixer a lot bigger than my 5 quart mixer, but it’s ultra-quiet, has a new fold speed that slowly starts the mixer to fold in ingredients, and comes in so many great new colours.
I also tried making my own pasta with the KitchenAid pasta roller and cutter attachments, and it’s so easy I can’t imagine going back to storebought. Here’s a look at my experience using the bowl-lift mixer and pasta attachments.
KitchenAid Professional bowl-lift stand mixer features
Unlike the traditional tilt head of smaller KitchenAid mixers, the KitchenAid Professional uses a lift system for the 7-quart bowl (there is also a 5.5 Qt. version available). You attach the bowl to the mixer and a handle lifts it up so the beater, whisk, or dough hook fits in the bottom of the bowl.
- 11-speed stand mixer including 1/2 speed for folding ingredients
- 500 watts of power to take on big batches of dough
- 6.62-litre (7-quart) brushed stainless steel bowl
- 2x the power in the bowl than the tilt-head stand mixer
- Double flex edge beater that scrapes the sides of the bowl with two flexible edges
- Includes coated double flex-edge beater, coated beater, wire whisk, dough hook, and pouring shield
Available in a variety of colours
The KitchenAid Professional bowl-lift stand mixer is available in 12 colours—Blue Velvet, Empire Red, White, Milkshake, Cast Iron Black, Matte Dried Rose, Pistachio, Mineral Water Blue, Medallion Silver, Feather Pink, and Contour Silver.
I love the brushed metallic finish on these mixers and I’m a huge fan of the new colours. There is such a variety including traditional fire engine red or the beautiful soft Blue Velvet. I also like the new design of the beaters and dough hook. They are double-coated and have a grey finish, and I think they are a great upgrade on the standard white.
KitchenAid Professional bowl-lift stand mixer vs. KitchenAid tilt-head mixer
If you’re like me and you’re a longtime owner of KitchenAid stand mixers, you may be wondering what the most important differences are between the new KitchenAid Professional and KitchenAid Artisan stand mixers. The most notable difference between the two is that the KitchenAid Professional uses a bowl-lift system that lifts the bowl up to the beaters. The tilt-head mixers lock the bowl onto the base and the head tilts down into the bowl. After using it for a while I think bowl-lift is a great feature for a stand mixer that can hold as much as the KitchenAid Professional can. Double batches can be pretty heavy, so it’s nice to just lock the bowl on and lift it up.
The bowl-lift design also gives the mixer more room to mix, and that helps prevent dough from wrapping its way around the base where you attach the beater, whisk, or dough hook. I’ve found this usually happens when I’m mixing bread dough in my KitchenAid Artisan 5 quart bowl. The dough will work its way up the beater and wrap its way around the connector. It can be a bit hard to clean, so I love how that’s no longer an issue with the 7 quart bowl.
Using the KitchenAid Professional bowl-lift stand mixer
11 speeds and ultra-quiet motor
I had a friend who owned the first generation KitchenAid Professional stand mixer and her one issue with it was how loud the motor was. Understandably, a 500 watt motor will be a little louder than the standard 350 watt motor on tilt-head mixers as it’s quite a bit more powerful. I’m happy to say that, even though the new KitchenAid Professional runs a bigger motor, it’s also very quiet. It’s no louder than my KitchenAid Artisan, and I think it might actually be a bit quieter.
With a motor this powerful, this mixer can handle massive batches of dough. KitchenAid has said the 6.62-litre (7-quart) bowl has 40% more capacity than tilt-head mixers and can take on 8.5 lbs of bread dough or mash 7.5 lbs of potatoes at one time. I made a double batch of bread dough and still had room to spare. I couldn’t believe the space the mixing bowl had, and the motor had no trouble blasting through thick dough.
This stand mixer has 11 distinct speeds. 10 is the most powerful speed, and KitchenAid has added a 1/2 speed for slow start up. Half speed is for folding, so you can use it for ingredients like egg whites. I like to use it when I add everything to the bowl at once because the slow start prevents flour from flying out of a full bowl. With my own mixer I’ll turn the power on to level 1 and have flour everywhere, even with the pour shield on. With the slow start on the KitchenAid Professional bowl-lift mixer, everything stays in the bowl where it belongs.
Flex edge beater and pour shield
I’m a huge fan of the KitchenAid pour shield. I’ve used it on my own mixer and it does help reduce splatter, but it works even better on the KitchenAid Professional stand mixer. I could turn the mixer on with a full bowl of flour and have no issue with flying flour or splatter at all. I also think the included double flex edge beater helps in that regard. It scrapes the sides of the bowl so nothing is left unmixed, and it mixes everything up much faster than the standard beater.
Features of KitchenAid stand mixer pasta attachments
While testing out the KitchenAid Professional I also tested out the KitchenAid Pasta Roller and Cutter attachments. Just add the attachment to your stand mixer and you can easily whip up tons of fresh pasta.
- Includes a pasta roller, a fettuccine cutter, and a spaghetti cutter
- Easily attaches to your KitchenAid stand mixer hub
- All-metal housing will stand up to years of use
Testing KitchenAid pasta roller and cutter attachments
One of my favourite things about having a KitchenAid stand mixer is how many great attachments you can fit onto the hub. You just unscrew the small cap on the front of the mixer and add one of the many different attachments.
The KitchenAid pasta attachment set comes with a pasta roller, spaghetti cutter, and fettuccini cutter. They are all made of durable stainless steel and they easily attach to the front of the stand mixer. I made a batch of pasta dough and popped it on the pasta roller. It has a dial you can adjust for thickness, but to make it thin enough to feed through I shaped the dough into a ball and pressed it down into a disk. The disk was still pretty thick when I first started to drop it through the pasta roller, but the roller grabbed onto the dough and pulled it through.
The pasta roller had absolutely no problem at all with thicker dough, and I tested out the different thickness levels by pulling the dough through over and over again. I found if you started too thin the dough would tear a bit, so I recommend you push the dough through on level 2 a few times before trying a thinner level. Level 8 is the thinnest, and it’s the best level for angel hair pasta. Level 4 is great for spaghetti.
Make your own spaghetti or fettuccini
Once you’ve pressed your dough and it’s as thin as you’d like it, you can decide how you’d like to use it. I have a lasagna pan that’s 9 x 11 so I cut some pasta sheets and let them dry as lasagna noodles. I also used the spaghetti and fettuccini attachments. The thin dough is fed through the attachment and strings of spaghetti or fettuccini are pushed out. It’s so fun to make pasta like this, and a single batch of dough gave me so much pasta I was looking all over my kitchen for places to hang it or lay it down. Christine, editor of Home & Lifestyle here at the blog, recommended using a pasta drying rack to dry all of the pasta you whip up with this attachment. I am definitely going to pick one up so I can make big batches and let them dry.
There are so many great KitchenAid stand mixer attachments including ice cream makers, meat grinders, and ice shavers. I’d love to try them all, and the Pasta Roller & Cutter is definitely one I’ll be adding to my kitchen. It’s so fun to use, and I think the Pasta Roller would be a great tool to use to thin out my pizza dough too.
Should you choose the KitchenAid Professional bowl-lift stand mixer?
For me, there are quite a few reasons to love the KitchenAid Professional bowl-lift stand mixer. It has a quiet, powerful motor, a much bigger bowl, and the flex edge beater does a great job of scraping the sides of the bowl so you don’t need to stop and use a scraper. The pour shield is also a great addition to the mixer as it prevents splatter when you’re mixing at high speeds. The 1/2 speed soft start-up prevents flour from flying everywhere and lets me use the mixer for tasks like folding eggs or light stirring.
I love all of the attachments you can add to KitchenAid stand mixers, and the Pasta Roller & Cutter is definitely my top choice. It takes a few simple ingredients and turns them into delicious pasta. Just a word of warning—having this attachment will ruin you for store bought pasta. Fresh pasta is so good I can’t imagine buying grocery store pasta anymore.
The KitchenAid Professional bowl-lift stand mixer is available in 12 colours. You can choose the perfect shade for your kitchen right now at Best Buy.
Table of Contents
- KitchenAid Professional bowl-lift stand mixer features
- KitchenAid Professional bowl-lift stand mixer vs. KitchenAid tilt-head mixer
- Using the KitchenAid Professional bowl-lift stand mixer
- Features of KitchenAid stand mixer pasta attachments
- Testing KitchenAid pasta roller and cutter attachments
- Should you choose the KitchenAid Professional bowl-lift stand mixer?
meat grinder
Dough mixer is the most useful mixer attachment for me as I mix a lot of dough to create my desserts.
I would love the meat grinder attachment, and my wife would love the pasta roller and attachments.
The pasta roller attachment and the meat grinder would both be used most in our houose — me using the pasta roller, husband using the meat grinder.
KitchenAid Stand Mixer Attachment Pack with Wire Whip, Dough Hook and Flat Beater would meet all of my basic needs in one package.
I enjoy making cakes from scratch, so the double flex edge beater would come in handy for mixing my cake batter.
Pasta roller and meat grinder
We would like to have the Meat grinder because then we could buy fresh local beef and make ground out of it!
We would use a fettuccine cutter a lot
There are some really great attachments. We have had our eye on the pasta attachments for some time now.
This double flex edge beater that scrapes the sides of the bowl with its 2 flexible edges sounds intriguing. Every spatula I own is ruined in some fashion. Yes, I could buy more, but then they just get worn out too, so I’m thinking this attachment would be most welcome!!!! Then again, less cake batter to lick. It might make me less popular. Wait. Family still gets to eat baked cake!! All good again.
The pasta roller all the way for me!
pasta roller attachment would be ideal for me because we love pasta in our home and making it from scratch would be amazing
The meat grinder would be great to have so my hubby can make jerky and sausage
I would love the pasta roller as we make our pasta from scratch already and this would be perfect to make life a little easier
meat grinder attachment would be useful for making my dogs’ food
The meat grinder attachment would be most useful to me as I could make hubby his saugages.
That pour shield would be ideal for messy me, and for my kids who’d be using the mixer, too. Less cleanup. My husband is the neat one. 🙂
They have an ice cream maker attachment???? I never knew that but now I need it LOL-Thanks Shelley
The pour shield would prevent a lot of extra clean up!
The pasta roller and cutter attachment would be the most useful for me!
The KitchenAid Ice Cream Maker Stand Mixer Attachment would be most useful to my family as we love ice cream, but I don’t love the additives in store-bought ice cream. We could use more simple, natural ingredients in our home made ice and create our own special flavours, too, with this attachment.
I would love to use the the pour shield to reduce those annoying splatters when using the Stand Mixer.
The dough hook would be awesome for when I make my overnight buns
All the pasta attachments would be so useful as all my grandkids absolutely love pasta with butter and parmesan cheese. Making fresh pasta would be such a treat! The slicer/shredder would also be great for shredding carrots and cabbage (and fresh parmesan!)
The pasta Roller attachment Would be great to use.
The pasta roller attachment would be the most useful
I love ice cream so it has to be the Kitchenaid Ice Cream Maker Stand Mixer Attachment
The pasta attachments would be used all the time in my home. Most of the time we only eat homemade pasta that I have to use a hand roller for. These attachments would save a lot of time.
The annual family cookie exchange. It is so much fun baking with my sister and mom and the house smell so nice with all the flavours in the air.
The beater. I love to make cheesecake.
d get the Sausage Stuffer Stand Mixer Attachment as we make sausage all the time.
The pasta roller and cutter, as I’d love to try to make my own pasta!
There is nothing better than fresh pasta, so for me the pasta attachment would be so useful and something really special.
My choice would definitely be the pasta maker.
I agree with Shelley that my favourite is the Pasta Roller & Cutter. I absolutely love pasta, so I would to make homemade pasta with my family. Especially over the holidays!
I’d love the pour shield and the double flex edge beater. No more flying batter with the pour shield and the double flex edge beater will incorporate all the ingredients better and the leave the bowl cleaner.
The grinder attachment for making my own burger meat
The pasta roller and fettuccini cutter is amazing!
The dough hook because I want to start making my own bread.
the pasta roller attachment
Definitely the pasta maker. Nothing better than home made pasta!!
I think this would be great – the extra power I need. I make bread and bagels, and it really needs more power. If I had the pasta roller attachment I think I’d use it the most, because it is more than a 1 person job if you try to do it with a hand crank machine.
the pasta attachments as we love eating pasta
The pasta roller attachment would be most useful for us as we love pasta! Being able to make homemade pasta sounds amazing.
Pasta roller would be great.
The pour shield to reduce splatter seems to simply be a great idea.
Dough hook as i grew up eating roti that my mom made. Now that i have moved out, its find it so hard to make dough for roti regularly. Dough attachment will cut the time to make roti to less than half.
the Ice Cream Maker Stand Mixer Attachment would be most useful as i make and eat a lot of ice cream
The shredder attachment is a must for shedding cheese for lasagna.
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