KitchenAid Professional bowl-lift stand mixer and pasta attachment review

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.