In the world of stand mixers, one name stands above the rest: KitchenAid. When I was putting together my wedding registry, one of the first items I added was a pear-green KitchenAid stand mixer, crossing my fingers that someone might be nice enough to buy it. But then I was given a Breville 5-quart stand mixer to try out and test for review here, and a week later I took the KitchenAid off my registry. Why did I change my mind?
First, you should know I am a stand mixer newbie. I have never owned one, and can count on one hand the number of times I've used one at work or at a friend's house. I didn't care about brands when I pulled the Breville out of the box; I was just excited to try some of the recipes I had avoided (brioche! marshmallows!) because I didn't own a stand mixer.
So I put it to work, making cake batters, double batches of cookies, bread dough, and those homemade marshmallows. Along the way, I began to realize the Breville has features the KitchenAid doesn't, features I would certainly miss if that pear-green mixer actually did land on my front porch.
Favorite Features
Here are the stand-out features of the Breville mixer. I know that the KitchenAid has some of these as well, but I just wanted to tell you what stood out to me.
• A well-designed front handle which makes it easy to lift the 20-pound appliance onto the counter.
• A thermo-cutoff system, which automatically switches off the mixer if the motor begins to overheat. I never triggered this feature, but I imagine it would help protect the motor if you do a lot of heavy-duty bread-baking.
• An easy to operate dial control, with clear, simple displays that translate the 12 speeds of the mixer into baking terms like "knead," "fold" or "whip."
• A digital timer that can count up or down, which is my number-one favorite feature. Counting down means you can set the mixer to a certain amount of time and step away. When the time is up, the mixer stops and your batter isn't overbeaten because you were distracted by a phone call. Counting up means you can figure out the timing of your favorite recipes — how long to whip the eggs before you fold them into the batter, for instance — making your baking even more precise. The control dial includes a "pause" setting, which stops the mixer and pauses the timer, so you can add more ingredients or wash a spatula without disrupting the timer.
The mixer is solidly built, with a 550-watt motor that feels powerful but is surprisingly quiet. Included with the mixer is a flat beater, a scraper beater, a wire whip, a dough hook, a spatula, and a pouring shield. For light batters, the scraper beater does an excellent job of reaching the edges of the bowl, as some of the above photos show.
My only minor complaint is that it takes two hands to tilt up the head — one to hit the tilt-release button and one to push up on the front handle — which can be inconvenient if one hand is slippery with butter or covered with wet dough. (That, and the fact that it doesn't fit under my cupboards! But that is the fault of my wonky rental kitchen, not the mixer.) It is a small issue with an appliance that is otherwise a pleasure to use. If I have to return the mixer to Breville post-review, it won't be a KitchenAid taking its place; it will be another Breville.
• Find it: Breville 5-Quart Die-Cast Stand Mixer, $271.90 at Amazon
Do you have a non-KitchenAid stand mixer? Why did you choose it?
Related: Should I Buy a Tilt-Head or Bowl-Lift KitchenAid Mixer?
Apartment Therapy Media makes every effort to test and review products fairly and transparently. The views expressed in this review are the personal views of the reviewer and this particular product review was not sponsored or paid for in any way by the manufacturer or an agent working on their behalf. However, the manufacturer did give us the product for testing and review purposes.
(Images: Anjali Prasertong)
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Oh I'd die for one of these. I still use my mom's old 70's era sunbeam. It get's the job done, but there's lots of bells and whistles I'm living without. A dough hook would be a life saver for me.
I don't own a stand mixer, but I have always believed that stand mixer is synonymous with Kitchen Aid. I think part of the reason why is that the Kitchen Aid lasts for years. My mother's is still going after twenty five years.
i wonder if the Breville can stand the test of time that way.
My husband came with his own KitchenAid mixer (bonus!) which we use for baking occasionally but we use it more for the attachments (meat grinder, veggie strainer, etc.) than for actual mixing. The Breville looks very nice but it doesn't seem to have any attachments. If it had an accessory port that fit KitchenAid attachments, it would definitely be on my wish list if our current mixer died.
This is good to know. I've always suspected that there are stand mixers out there that are just as good (if not better) as the coveted KitchenAid. Nice to have a first-hand opinion.
I guess I'm not getting rid of my Kitchen Aid any time soon, but the timer feature sounds like a game changer to me.
I thought it was pretty funny that when I viewed this article, an advertisement featuring a Kitchen Aid stand mixer one of the ads. :)
i don´t know about everyone else's kitchen aid, but mine has a over heating feature, that cuts of and cools the engine if you over use it.
I have a Kitchen Aid. It's my grandmother's from at least the 1960s and it's still going strong. It's not pretty, but it certainly gets the job done.
While the handle is nice, it takes away some of the features of the KitchenAid that I love- the front attachments that really make my stand mixer a multi-tasker.
I do like the timer addition though.
Before you buy a Kitchenaid, do a lot of reading. The old ones had metal gears. The new ones have cheapie plastic gears and many cooks have said they dont last. If you have an old one, hold onto it. It is a gem. I want a Breville!
I bought the vintage styled sunbeam, I really like it. It is pretty quiet and gets the job done, it has the front handle also. It was only $29 on clearance so I gave it a try.
The Breville looks nice but as others have mentioned the fact that it doesn't have any accessory ports makes it a nonstarter for me. Why not take a look at the 800 watt 5.5 quart Cuisinart SM-55? The Cuisinart seems to include all the features of both the KitchenAid and Breville besides the carrying handle. Plus, the Cuisinart allows for more attachments than any other mixer I've seen.
I have this mixer and I love it. I got it as a 21st birthday present (but I picked it out myself). The scraper beater is by far my favourite feature- I don't have to constantly stop and scrape the bowl. I do it once (to get the top 'line' of mixture that inevitably forms) and that's it. I also love the timer, I can just set it and go about working on other parts of the recipe and it will stop itself when the clock runs down. You can now buy an ice cream bowl attachment (at least here in Australia, Breville is an Australian quality brand) and when I got mine I got a free set of digital scales with a built in digital thermometer. I was split between the KitchenAid and Breville, but the Breville was cheaper and I don't have the need to mince meat or use an electric appliance to make pasta. I am in Australia though, and a lot of the offers they have on the mixer (different colours, power, attachments) seem not have filtered through to the American market yet.
I have a refurbed KA stand mixer that has never worked quite right, but I didn't realize it till I'd had it past the refurb warranty expired. Grr. But ti's still running, despite the abuse it's taken, including being shipped across North America. My mom's KA went strong for 30 years (its death is a long & funny story), and she got a professional model afterward. I'm impressed that the Breville comes with its own spatula beater! I had to order the one I have for my KA from Beater Blade, and I don't know what I did without it. And it looks like the Breville's is metal, where my Beater Blade is plastic (which has yet to show signs of strain, I must say). I use mine even for stiffer doughs, like oatmeal cookies.
I 3rd the warning on the new Kitchen Aides.... My sister in law is a high school home ec teacher (yes, they still exist) and said that the KAs went cheap and plastic. The old ones I am sure are worthy of deep love but I would look someplace else for a new version. As I am currently in the market for a new mixing machine, I really liked this article but am also concerned about long term durability. The only reason I am replacing my Bosch is because it and everything else was lost in a wildfire... Hopefully, I can find something durable enough to last the next 40 years.