Translating: Kitchen Aid to Ankarsrum
Preamble:
Bought an Ankarsrum a while back.
I’m using the roller and scraper, adding water first, etc. I’m pretty happy with it.
Some of the breads I’ve made have been really fine.
But some—notably enriched breads, like dinner rolls—have been tough. And that only sometimes. Thanksgiving rolls were maybe the best I’ve ever made. Christmas—same recipe—tough.
I made the (sourdough) dinner rolls from THE PERFECT LOAF the other day. The rise was beautiful, and the rolls are too. But they’re so, so dense. They taste wonderful; they’re just dense.
That recipe of course gives guidelines for mixing with a Kitchen Aid or similar. So I had to wing it. I went with about 6 o’clock for 10-12 minutes, I think.
I then shaped as you would a pizza dough ball and baked.
Am I mixing too long/too fast/toohard?
Or is it all in the shaping?
Is there somewhere a conversion guide from KA-Ank? Such a thing sure would be helpful.
It's not time but the consistency of your dough. That goes for KA, hand or any other kind of kneading.
Not that I know of. Enjoy!
martino, from my reading, I gather that mixing cold butter into the dough with an Ank can be challenging. I suspect that getting cold butter (along with it's water content) to coat the gluten strands in your dough is probably the issue.
chocoberrie wrote a detailed Ank tutorial and about half way down talks about various ways to add butter.
Also, check Benito's Blog for tips. He started using an Ank last year and adapted his enriched doughs to the process and has had great success. I believe he uses softened butter.
Dave
There is no reason to add cold butter for rolls. The challenge with the Ank is when you are making pastry/cakes etc. that requires cold butter. Many people will grate the butter which seems to be a good solution. For bread, the butter should be soft as you are not trying to create layers of fat.
I'm actually mixing up some pretzel rolls right now using softened butter which I add in after the flour rests for 30 minutes.
Best,
Ian
I have not had any issues whatsoever in my bread baking and I make rolls all the time. It takes longer to develop the dough in the ANK than the Kitchenaid so you want to make sure you are mixing long enough. Even if you don't develop completely in the mixer do 3 sets of stretch and folds during your initial bulk and you should be fine. Also, make sure you add enough water to hydrate your dough properly but that shouldn't really change because of the mixer you use. The ANK is the 3rd mixer I have had for my bread making and it's my favorite by far.
I would definitely let the machine run for longer than 12 minutes next time. Put it closer to 3 and let it go for 16-18 minutes.
I notice a few skipped steps going from shaping to baking. Any steps before and between like letting the dough bulk rise before shaping or allowing the rolls to rise after shaping and before baking?
Dough temperature will also influence the rate of rising. This can vary a lot from one batch to the next depending on the temp of ingredients. (Season, ambient temp, water temp, chilled flour, mixing time, etc.)
I followed the recipe as written in the book. Except: he wants you to shape the individual rolls with a bench scraper. I didn’t do that. I rolled the weighed-out dough pieces on the counter until they formed tight balls, like I was making tiny pizza crusts. In retrospect, this may have been a mistake. That’s part of what I’m wondering.
I have a proofing box—which, by the way, I love. That helps a bunch with temps and proofing.
I made a batch of my regular rolls for cinnamon rolls yesterday. (We’ve been snowed in for a week.) I kneaded them slowly (about 2:30) for about 15 minutes. They came out fantastic.
As a rule, my sourdough breads have always been denser than breads made with commercial yeast.
1. Double the mixing time countig from the moment the dough comes together.
2. It is still a dumb machine, it's your job to make sure that it actually kneads and does not just spin the dough around.
TPL is located about 60 miles south and 2,000 ft lower than here (he's at 5,000 ft.). The density may be related to altitude; things levitate so easily up here.
Martino: Sorry I'm so late to the discussion. I think you're kneading your dough with the Ank for too little time. Using the "regular" roller/scraper technique, it routinely took me 15 min. kneading time, sometimes even more , to create the "window pane". The hook took even longer.
I've done a good bit of experimenting with my Ank (actually an Electrolux). I tried the roller/scraper method, and the dough hook/scraper method. Both were quite slow. That caused me to look at spiral mixers. I even went so far as to order one from Pleasant Hill Grain. The spiral I ordered was on back order, and it was months before it finally came in. In the meanwhile, I studied spiral mixer mechanics, and it occurred to me that the Ank action was kind of like that of a spiral. The bowl rotated for half the action, and the roller rotated not unlike that of the spiral's hook, for the other. The main difference being that the Ank lacked a breaker bar. I reasoned that if I changed the position of the scraper, rotating it toward the roller as far as it would go, that it would act like the breaker bar. I tried this approach, setting the roller arm at about the "4 o"clock" position, and holding the scraper as close the the roller as it would go. The first batch of rustic Italian bread dough I kneaded this way, truned out to be the best I'd ever made. It only took about 7 or 8 min. to complete the kneading. Since then, this is the technique I use for kneading. It worked so well, that I canceled my PHG spiral mixer order.
Now, it's a bit time consuming to stand by the mixer and hold the scraper in position, so I've opted to zip tie the scraper to the roller arm and no longer hold it by hand. I set the speed somewhere in the lower 1/3 on the speed dial. Configured like this, I can set the timer at 6-8 min., and walk away from the mixer. It can run completely unattended.
Long story, short suggestion: increase your roller/scraper kneading time, or experiment with my spiral mixer mimicing techinque. I think you'll get impoved, and consistent results. Good luck. Jim
Jim, that's a pretty interesting set up. Do you have a way to post a picture of your Ank set up and ready to go like you described. Could be helpful to other users.
Dave
Sorry Dave, I don't have a camera or phone to take a photo, so I cant post one. Jim
No problem. Still a very interesting idea. Thanks for sharing it.
Dave
One thing I'd like to add to my kneading tip. I've been baking a recipe that is about 75% hydration. It's worked very well for me. I hadn't done a low hydration dough with this technique. Today I tried a small 60% hydration recipe to see how that worked. Everything went pretty well. The process did take a bit more watching though. I found myself manipulating the scraper a bit to keep the dough ball turning and twisting around the roller. The knead took a bit longer as well-maybe 2 minutes more. The dough turned out pretty nice.
Just an alert so you know what I experienced with low hydration. Jim
I just received mine (bought from another TFL member) and only used it once with an 85% hydration 80/20 first clear/rye bread, and it only took about 8 minutes. The results were amazing. I'll be making a ciabatta next, so even higher hydration for that bread, likely around 100% with a mixture of Italian and KA AP flours.
So I'm a bit surprised to hear someone needed to jump through hoops to get the machine to quickly knead their dough.
About the lowest hydration bread I make is a 65% bagel dough, but I have gotten into the habit of doing the final gluten formation for doughs like that on my dough board by hand with stretch and folds after the mixer gets it 80-90% of the way to where I want it to be. I love the feel of dough when the gluten kicks in. So, I will likely do the same with this machine.
Just a bit more info gleaned from my most recent session.
I just mixed up a 68% hydration dough that had a bit over 2k flour and weighed 3495g. (7.9lbs). While the machine didn't seem to be stressed by the weight of the batch, the volume seemed to be pretty much the limit. The dough wanted to streach over the top of the roller and rise to near the top of the bowl by the scraper. The dough involved a 50% pre-ferment, 50% dough mix. It turned out fine, probably took 8 min kneading time and was nice and smooth.
I don't remember what Ankarsrum lists as the max capacity of bread dough, but I don't think I'd try anything over 8 lbs. (3500g) with my kneading technique. Just too much volume. Jim
I have not done more than what you are describing but I’ve seen post on my FB group with people who do it routinely. You need to remove the scraper once the initial dough is developed and it should prevent the dough from climbing up the roller.
Remember, I'm not using the Ank to knead bread in the conventional way. My set up is a bit different, and I would find managing the dough too difficult if the volume was greater than 3.5 K. Jim
I just checked on PHG's website and they list the max dough weight recommended for the Ank as 11 lbs.( 6.2 k) They list the max flour as 2 k. The bake I just reported on ,consisted of 2052 g bread flour. Actually exceeding the recommended max. My dough had 1430 g water. I can imagine a 100% hydration which would weigh 4 k. But 6.2 k? Maybe the recommendations are listed wrong. Anyway, I won't be trying much more that 2 k flour soon.