I have ordered the paddle and dough hook. Soon, more tasty, tasty chemistry will be happening at my house.
Oh, so bad and dangerous. I have made pound cake, chocolate gingerbread, roughly twenty loaves of bread, four batches of danish pastry, and four batches of tortillas. In about a month.
:eek: I thought I was the only one who named kitchen items! My KitchenAid is named Babe The Blue Ox & my 7 1/2 quart Le Crusette French Oven is Phyllis. [/hijack]
I can make and not eat. I’m good like that. Actually, last night I made four dozen non-fat blueberry bran muffins by hand. I can’t wait for my paddle!
Most of it was given away. Still, it’s scary amount of food.
The great thing is that you get all these grateful people worshipping you. Especially if you make chocolate danish pastry.
My biggest problem down here is the flour. My never-ever, ever ever ever, never failed in the 20 years I’d been making it, pie crust doesn’t work here. I think the flour is too hard. I think I’ll try cake flour, that’s softer, isn’t it?
We have the grinder, which we’ve used a few times. Very nice to have, though it’s not terribly good for grinding HUGE quantities of meat. For that we go to the In-laws and use his industrial grinder.
I do very much want the pasta attachment. We’ve made it by hand a few times, but the rolling of the dough is just too much work, and the automated effort of the attachment would clearly make this much easier.
If it wasn’t so expensive, and money not so tight at the moment, i’d have one in an instant!
In what way does the crust not work? Is it too dry, flaky, gooey? It is probably the wheat type, but you might want to try mixing cake flour half and half rather than a full substitution.
Let us know how it works when it arrives, ok? 
About a bazillion years ago, I got a professional KitchenAid mixer at a a house sale. The thing is heavy, and all chrome. It is more powerful that the stuff at Wal-mart.The thing’s a real workhouse, and has never balked at heavy bread dough or a stiff cake icing. There is a little port on the back of the machine, that I lubricate with sewing machine oil every so often. Keeps everything running smoothly and quietly.
Herein, read and weep:
-2 paddles, 2 whisks and the dough hook
-a hot water/cold water jacket( it’s a shallow pan that hooks under the mixer bowl,can be filled with hot or cold water, depending on what is needed. Really good for beating egg yolks for mousse, they mount up very high being warmed from below)
-an ice cream maker:dasher, canister and bucket, all of which work, but i prefer my Il Gelataio.
-A metal housing into which 3 different cutting/shredding blades fit. If you can foods, and it’s obvious the owner of this mixing marvel did, then it is invaluable.
-A metal bowl with no bottom, not tapered, but cylinder-shaped. Into which 3 screens of different coarseness fit, for pureeing cooked foods. It’s fitted with a metal piece that looks like a two-headed hammer, with porcelain cylinders, that rotate, for the heads. They roll around on the screen, mashing and pureeing. The water jacket is underneath to catch the pureed food.
-Can opener. Piece of junk, but I agree, 50bucks? Get real.
-A meat grinder with several disks. sauage making at home is a rare occurence, but it does make it muich easier, especially since there is a stuffer tip to put the meat mixture in the casings.
I've never seen another one like it, and since I payed just 30 bucks for the works, it doesn't owe me a penny.