Pizza dough mixers: the best machines for bread and pizza

Pizza dough mixers: what they are for

A professional dough mixer is a machine that lets you make many different types of dough at high speed without compromising quality. The pizza dough mixer is a useful, essential tool in many professional kitchens, as it makes any preparation that requires a dough quicker and simpler: from pizza to bread, from sponge cake to egg tagliatelle and much more. Today many amateur cooks also want one in their kitchen because of how practical it is.

Pizza dough mixers: types

A dough mixer has a bowl, removable or fixed, available in different capacities from 5 kg upwards, and a continuous rotating movement in which arms of various shapes mix and knead the ingredients. Several types of pizza dough mixer are available, and they differ mainly in how much heat they transfer to the pizza dough by the end of mixing.

• Fork mixers: fitted with a fork-shaped kneading arm; they are the slowest and least productive, but they can knead doughs with a low water content and transfer the least heat to the dough.
• Diving arm mixers: two arms create a circular, vertical movement similar to kneading by hand; they are designed for very high-hydration doughs, giving greater oxygenation and therefore more volume in the finished product, although mixing times are long and costly.
• Spiral mixers (by far the most widely used in pizzerias) are less versatile than the others but have the advantage of a powerful motor that produces excellent pizza dough at remarkable speed. They were in fact designed to cut mixing times considerably in industrial production, and they work any type of dough through the continuous action of a spiral-shaped arm that presses the dough from top to bottom, transferring more heat to the finished dough than any other type of mixer.
• Planetary mixers (the most popular for home use) are very versatile and efficient because they can take several types of attachment. Their elliptical movement produces a very smooth, even dough, although it transfers a high amount of heat to it.

How to choose the right bread and pizza dough mixer

Choosing the right pizza dough mixer can seem complicated, so here is a list of things to consider when buying. Our team of experts is also on hand to help you choose among the available bread and pizza dough mixers. Consider:

• the intended use;
• power;
• mixing action;
• energy consumption;
• materials;
• stability;
• speed;
• dimensions.