Don’t despair. After much trial and error, my father-in-law has become quite adept and making gluten-free bread that’s nearly indistinguishable from wheat bread. You need not give up your love of baking.
Slight hijack: Did anyone read the article in the New York Times of November 8, 2006 by Mark Bittman that described a no-knead bread recipe that supposedly yielded great bread? The trick was to let the bread rise for a long time, like 18 hours or so. I haven’t tried it yet, but may do so in my apartment kitchen. I’m curious if anyone tried it.
Ginger, for 76 bucks, I’d say your mixer is a fine size! I’m a little jealous, although I think I’ll be happier with the larger model. Dewey, I’d be interested to hear how your no-knead bread turns out, but I live at 5300 feet, so yeast doughs rise way more rapidly here than they do at a lower altitude. If I left bread to rise for that long, I’d be afraid it would just overrise and collapse on itself.
We’ve had our leftover pie with fresh whipped cream already. It went fine, but I first tried whipping just half a cup of cream and when it didn’t start getting foamy quickly, I got nervous and assumed it was too small a quantity. I did the whole carton and ended up with a pretty big bowl of whipped cream. Once I’d done that, I got over my shyness with the mixer. I just took the last sheet of chocolate chip cookies out of the oven, and I have two loaves worth of whole wheat bread rising right now. It’ll take me a little while to get used to mixing bread the “right” way again (with the food processor, you have to add liquid to dry, not the other way around), but when that dough started forming a ball and rising on the hook, I was in heaven. Dinsdale and all the rest of you are welcome to stop on by in a couple of hours for fresh bread and whipped cream (the pie is gone).
We may have cheesecake tomorrow. Heck, if I keep on like this, we may have it tonight! I have the feeling that next I may be looking for advice on where to find tall women’s pants in a larger size.
Yes. I am the queen of the Internets. 
I’ll give you mine. I bake fat-free
Great Og, too many smilies!
Would he share the recipe? My niece has celiac disease or syndrome or whatever, and she could use a good recipe. Her identical twin sister (they are 15) doesn’t have it, which doesn’t seem quite fair…
I have this model (5 quart Artisan) in Onyx Black. Bridal Registries are awesome things.
I use mine for mostly lighter baking, with cookie dough being the thickest thing I’ve mixed so far. I have yet to use the dough hook or wire wisk, but give me time. I second what another poster said - If you don’t have space on your counter to keep it out full time, clear some space for it. You’ll use it much more if it’s out on the counter rather than if you have to lug it out of the cabinet each time. Also, the second bowl is a necessity.
A friend has a professional quality one and it creams up two pounds of cold butter in no time flat. I never have need for this feature, but it’s a good reference for how powerful the professional ones really are.
I made it. Two loaves, one half whole wheat, and one half semolina. Nice bread, but almost too moist, and I can’t say I loved the process of getting the very soft dough into the red-hot corningware. The flavour was excellent, and the crust was very crackly.
I don’t mind kneading, and the process is equal parts long fermentation for better flavour (which you can do with a less soupy dough), soft dough and hot pan for good crust (panic-inducing, at least for me) and an avoidance of kneading (which I don’t mind).
So, meh. Good bread, but my regular bread is pretty damn good. I’m not so in love with the crust that I want to do the fun holding-a-slippery-500F-container thing.
If you’re a Costco member, they have quite a nice price on a professional model ($299 for a 475 watt machine):
I just got that one tonight, in a nice burnished silver. 
Be careful with the ‘bigger is better’ advice. My Mom is a KILLER shopper. She got us this:Kitchen Appliances to Bring Culinary Inspiration to Life | KitchenAid
(actually the Epicurian, I can’t find that on their site)
At a killer price.
The problem being: you can’t mix anything in small amounts. Enough dough for a single pizza has the hook just spinning in the air above the ingredients.
This has been a fascinating thread for me. I have a base model KitchenAid, and while I am devoted to it in a way that probably should be reserved for actual humans, I have occasionally wondered if I shouldn’t have gotten a slightly larger model.
After reading this thread, I have decided that if it ever burns up and dies, which I doubt, I might get one with a larger bowl, but otherwise my model is just perfect for me.
It’s always nice to be affirmed in a decision. I’ll go pat my mixer now and tell her how nice she is. 
I’ve wanted one of these for years. I have a little money saved and I may go ahead and get one but now I don’t know which model. I was all set to go with an Artisan series and then I saw the price on the Professional one from Sam’s Club that Internet Legend posted. What’s the differences between the two? Do all the attachments fit the all the machines? I’d eventually like to get the pasta attachment and maybe the grinder. Please don’t point me to the kitchenaid site, my connection is running like a half dead crippled snail through molasses and last time I tried to look there it took way too long to be able to compare the different models. Just tell me what you know. Thanks.
I mostly want mine for baking things like cookies and quickbreads but I may eventually try bread. When making cookies I’d like the option of doing double batches. I haven’t baked much lately because of arthritis. I almost gave up on a very stiff dough one time because I was practically in tears from trying to mix it. But I am probably open to making just about anything once I get one of those babies.
Earlier this year, we bought an Artisan model, which appears to be the 325-watt variety, in cobalt blue, which doesn’t appear to be available anymore, so good thing we got it when we did. Our kitchen is tropical-themed, with FiestaWare in wild colors, so we had to pick a color that wouldn’t match anything just so it would fit in (we already had three KitchenAid appliances: a white blender, a red food processor, and a black coffeemaker). Being a guy, I would have liked the extra power in those lever-lowered-bowl models, but something that tall just wouldn’t fit under our cabinets, and frankly I doubt we’d use the extra power anyway.
We haven’t used ours a ton, but what we’ve done with it, it managed without a hitch. The latest was a double batch of sugar cookie dough for Christmas cookies (six cups of flour), which caused a bit of a wobble due to the weight, but it mixed the hell out of them cookies. Overall assessment: most excellent.
Hey, that’s the one I got! Mine’s Empire Red (in the unlikely event that I hadn’t mentioned it).
Wile E, this one is a “bowl lift” model while the Artisan Series ones are tilt-head. It also has more wattage, and although I don’t know how that translates to horsepower (which would be a more useful measure), from everything I’ve read, the higher-wattage machines are more powerful. The bowl-lift models also have all-metal gears, and the Artisans have at least some nylon or plastic ones. I read reviews from some people on Amazon that said their Artisans had a plastic gear that failed under heavy loads and cost about $90 to replace. This seems to only be relevant if you’re making bread or mixing other very heavy loads, but it’s a consideration. Some people also find it difficult to remove the bowl on the Artisan. Some find the bowl-lift models difficult to work with, since you have very little room to add ingredients around the mixer head, but I imitated my hero, Alton Brown, and use my flexible plastic cutting board as a type of funnel. It works beautifully.
The attachments that go on the front of the mixer head work on all the models, even discontinued models - I saw a photo of the first KitchenAid mixer made, and it had the same fitting for attachments. The bowls and beaters and anything that goes on the bowl are specific to the series you buy. I’ve discovered that the Costco/Sam’s model number doesn’t return any results when you search for it on the KitchenAid site, but with some poking around, I’ve been able to find the right bowl (whether I’m willing to pay 60 bucks for an extra bowl is another matter).
Unintentionally Blank, have you tried adjusting the bowl height? I’m a manual-reader, and my manual said there’s a little screw behind the bowl-lifting thingy that adjusts the height of the bowl. From the KitchenAid site:
Okay, so in a day and a half, I’ve gone from someone who didn’t know the relative virtues of the different models of mixer to someone who fancies herself a connoisseur. I really need to take a nap or something.
I own a 300 Watt Ultra Power unit. 4.5 quart tilt head unit like the Artisan. Normally I am a more power kind of guy and would have gone for the 5 or 6 quart unit, but I went with the tilt head for one reason. You can remove the bowl without taking the beater off on a tilt head. On the bowl lift models, you have to install the bowl before the beater, and remove the beater before the bowl. A small thing, but one that made me choose the tilt head model.
One other advantage of the 4.5 quart models is the availability of a 3 quart bowl. perfect for a small amount of whipped cream or whatever.
The only time mine has ever strained at all was when I used the pasta rolling attachment. The motor really loaded down then.
Thanks I L I actually got the mixer out thie morning to look. The wire beater is adjusted appropriately, it’s the dough hook that has 1/2" to 3/4" clearance when it’s adjusted to that height. In a 6 qt. bowl, 3/4" is a LOT of volume. Thanks for the research!