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?
The Grinder Attachment would be great to make meatballs.
The pasta attachment would be so much easier than the manual hand crank ones! Would help me make pasta more often with its help
I’d love the pasta roller and cutter. I’m a big pasta fan and nothing beats fresh noodles.
I would love the pasta roller and cutter because there isn’t anything better than fresh pasta!
The pasta roller and cutter would be most useful. We love homemade pasta and this would make it so much faster and easier!
The pasta roller and cutter would be most useful for our family.
The KitchenAid Metal Food Grinder Stand Mixer Attachment would be most useful for me as we make a lot of meatballs!
The pasta attachment would be so useful instead of rolling out pasta by hand like we do now.
The pasta roller and cutter is so cool.
a fettuccine cutter would come in handy as we love fettuccine and I could make it home made, much better than store bought
I could use a new flex edge beater, mine is well used!
dough mixer to help make cakes easier
The pasta attachment would be most useful since I love making pasta, but rolling it out with a rolling pin is a test of strength.
Because we like to make our own sausage the metal food grinder attachment would be the most useful for our family
The dough mixer would be best for my family because my husband makes pizza regularly
Gotta say, every attachment is exciting… but that pasta roller and the incredible pour shield are music to my impatient-in-the-kitchen ears!
I want to try different pasta shapes.
dough mixer would be useful to me
I’ll try making my own lasagna sheets with the pasta attachment.
The ice cream maker because who doesn’t like ice cream.
The pasta roller and cutter attachments would be most useful as my family eats lots of pasta each week and would be fun to make
The Dough mixer would be the most useful attachment because I have a hard time kneading my bread well for my loved ones.
The pasta attachment looks so neat
I think the pasta roller and cutter attachments would be very useful! Would love to get into pasta making as we eat so much pasta in this household!
The fettucine cutter would be dreamy to have! We love love love pasta in my household and to be able to make it fresh like this would be next level!
The dough mixer would be the most helpful for my family for home made bread
The dough mixer would be super useful for me! Mixing dough is a tough job!
The pasta roller would be the most useful attachment for my household because we’ve always wanted to make fresh pasta, but it seems really hard!
The Dough mixer is the most useful mixer attachment for me as I find it hard to knead my bread and rolls but my family love to eat them.
The Pasta roller & cutter would be super handy and used most frequently in my household.
The Dough Mixer would be most useful for me because it would save a lot of work and sore hands.
I would use the pasta roller so much. Im obsessed with fresh pasta!
I would like the pasta roller and cutter
I think the dough mixer would be the most useful for me
a fettuccine cutter – it would be so awesome to make my own fresh, pasta for the family
I was love the dough mixer for making bread at home
The dough mixer would be the most helpful for my family for home made bread
The KitchenAid stand mixer attachment that I think would be most useful for my family is the pasta roller to try making our own pasta for the first time!
The KitchenAid Pasta Roller & Cutter Stand Mixer Attachment would be the most useful attachment because my family loves eating and making all types of noodles and pasta, and being able to make it fresh would make dinner that much tastier!
I thin the pasta attachment would be a huge hit with my family because we all love spaghetti carbanora!
The dough mixer would be super useful for me! Mixing dough is a tough job!
I think the pasta roller would be most useful. we eat a ton of pasta and I would really like to try making my own from scratch
The pasta roller would be the most useful attachment for my household because we’ve always wanted to make fresh pasta, but it seems really hard!
I have always wanted a Kitchen Aid mixer with the pasta attachments. Honestly, I look at all the attachments and know I would use each and every one! But the pasta one has always been the dream. Fresh pasta for my family would be amazing.
when I first saw e KitchenAid Pasta Roller and Cutter attachments. Just add the attachment to your stand mixer and you can easily whip up tons of fresh pasta – I was in that belief that it would not done properly – almost believing that it would fall sideways on my counter. I tried to pick up the stand mixer. It is heavy. The whole concept is sturdy and so reliable. I want it. It would facilitate so much in the kitchen and have it all ready without too much externuation.
The Dough mixer is the most useful mixer attachment for me as I find it hard to knead my bread and rolls but my family love to eat them.
The pasta attachment would get the most use at my house to test out gluten free recipes for my daughter.
I use the whisk on my mixer all the time to make Royal icing and merengues. The pour shield with splatter guard would definitely help keep my kitchen a lot more clean!
The double flex edge beaters and the dough hooks would be the most useful for me. I would definitely do more baking if I had a stand mixer.
I would love to have the meat grinder attachment for making relishes and grinding fresh meat for sauces.
I like the spiralizer. I have used a friend’s to peel apples for pie and it works great.
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