My apologies, I was assuming the ingredients are already mixed into a rough dough. That's how I do mine and I wasn't thinking about the procedure of mixing everything with the kitchen-aid first. Oh well, different approaches. Obviously the second speed straight away will fling flour over the counter. I just prefer hand mixing until a rough dough forms and kneading from there.Shyster wrote: I agree the first speed is too slow for effective kneading, but I use it (and IIRC the Kitchenaid manual said to do this) for approximately two minutes in order to bring the ingredients together. King Arthur Flour also recommends starting on the slowest speed and then increasing once everything is together. If I go right to the second speed it will fling flour all over the counter. I've had my Artisan for about five years or so and use it to bake bread every single week. It's plenty powerful so long as you don't overload the bowl. Based on my experience it's ability to effectively knead a batch runs out at about 28 ounces of flour or so. My standard weekly bake is a two-loaf batch using 22 ounces of flour. I've used this mixer to make literally hundreds of loaves of bread.
Please don't get me wrong, I wasn't knocking the Artisan mixer, I just don't own that particular model myself and was unfamiliar with the particular specifications. I know the Artisan has significantly less power than mine (i'm too lazy to look up the amounts). I've been baking bread for about 12 years with KitchenAid mixers (first my moms and then mine). I certainly wasn't insulting the Artisan, just making a note based on my own experience. I don't know what model mac has and I'm sure there are differences between the models that I wasn't taking into account. All i know is KitchenAid's are awesome mixers and mine is a workhorse in my kitchen! They get from this user.