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KitchenAid 525 Watts KP2671X Stand Mixer Product KP2671X Key FeaturesMixer Type StandSpeed Settings 10 Speeds Other Fea...

***Love at first sight, hate at first use:

Imagine my surprise when a relatively simple bread recipe with 8 cups of flour killed my new baby mixer. Am I disappointed? You betcha. Then it happened again, and again… on two additional specimens of this model.

Every reviewer raves about KitchenAid mixers. They seemed well built, had a myriad of available attachments, and the kind of orbital mixing head that stirs batters and doughs just like commercial models costing three or four times as much. I really wanted to love this mixer. I wanted to die before this KitchenAid did; after all, my mother is still using a forty- year old 4 quart model. When I started shopping for a stand mixer about six months ago, the largest one was limited to 475 watts at 5-1/2 quarts, not quite enough to handle dough for six dozen cookies or three loaves of bread (I’m working part-time as a professional baker these days, and like to test recipes at home). When I heard the six quart models would be released soon, I waited anxiously for the new KitchenAid “Professional” 6 qt., 525-watt stand mixer (model KP2671X) that could handle up to 14 cups of flour without a hitch.

***My reasons for purchase included:

— This mixer has the largest capacity and highest power of any household stand mixer.

— It comes with a nice transparent plastic guard to keep the bowl from spewing during vigorous mixing, and a pouring chute for adding ingredients.

— The whisk, cast aluminum paddle and dough hook seemed like the kind of durable, professional-quality attachments suggested by the label and price.

— The controls and assembly are very straightforward — a single eight-position power/speed control lever and heavy-duty lock and pin arrangements to hold the bowl and mixing devices.

— On this mixer, it’s possible to change speeds without turning the mixer off, unlike commercial mixers with heavy gearing.

— The durable stainless steel mixing bowl has a side handle. [It’s a little awkward to hold and pour anything from a filled bowl of this size, and nearly impossible to do so one-handed.]

— My culinary arts baking instructor (formerly head pastry chef for Opus One and Zingerman’s Bakehouse in the Detroit area) recommended the brand and asked if I could let her know how the 6-quart model performed, as she was thinking of buying one…

However, the organization of the product manual left something to be desired; there are about ten pages of warranty and customer service information to wade through before the rather sketchy information about setup and operation. The package didn’t include coupons or any of the other incentive materials one might receive with other kitchen appliances.

***The terrible tale of consumer disappointment, tragedy and woe:

The first Professional 6-qt. died after three minutes of use. The motor housing heated up and started smoking like a lung-cancer patient with two weeks to live. I immediately shut it down and rechecked the manual. Bread recipe, used the dough hook on speed two (the dough hook can _only_ be used on speed two, presumably to avoid overheating…), “some hot oil odor may be noted when first used”, everything else in order, let it cool down to room temperature, tried the reset… no action from the motor.

Kudos to the local kitchen specialty store, which suggested that I wait until the next shipment of these mixers rather than taking an immediate exchange. The clerk volunteered the information that every mixer they sold from this shipment had been returned with symptoms similar to those described above. She mentioned the KitchenAid rep.’s claim they had received bad components for this batch. Fair enough. I waited ten days and took home a mixer from a different shipment.

I started the second mixer (S/N WK4130938) according to directions and was going to let it mix my bread dough for the recommended 15 minutes. It ran for 8 minutes… so far, so good… then the motor quit. No smoke this time, but the motor housing was hot enough to burn my hand. I went through the recommended reset routine. Nearly every other KitchenAid mixer has a separate reset button; this one is supposed to reset automatically after being powered off and allowed to cool down. Ordinarily, I would recommend this as a convenient feature, but in this case it didn’t work. The second mixer was dead.

So I called up KitchenAid directly. After a mildly irritating (I hate Muzak) twenty minute wait on hold, I spoke to someone who claimed she had never heard of any problems whatsoever with this model. I walked her through the bread recipe that killed the first two, and she agreed that there was no reason why it shouldn’t be able to handle a total of four pounds of soft bread dough. I read her the “one year full replacement for any reason” warranty, and finally got her to offer a replacement after another ten minutes of discussion.

One week later, I had a new mixer (S/N WK4558040) shipped directly from the factory. First off, the box was resealed and utterly failed to contain a bowl shield and pouring chute. The “new” mixer had flour and egg residue on the base and dough paddle, so I was pretty suspicious that this was a reconditioned mixer. I tried my favorite bread recipe again and sure enough, this mixer died after about five minutes with the motor housing hot enough to burn.

You don’t have to be a genius to notice a trend here. My private unverifiable suspicion is that KitchenAid tried to ramp up the current to a lower power motor without changing the fundamental design, and didn’t test adequately. If KitchenAid had just said, “We’ve got a problem with this model. Would you like a different one?” on the customer service line, I wouldn’t be writing this unfavorable review. As things stand, I can’t recommend this mixer to anyone for any reason. It’s not just defective, it constitutes a fire and burn hazard worthy of a full-scale consumer recall. I might get back the $375 price, but I won’t get back the wasted time or my faith in KitchenAid products. Buy it at your own risk.

Addendum: Following a request for the recipe I used to test the mixer, you’ll find Sweet Pumpkin Bread (Pane Dolce Di Zucca) here: http://www.kitchenlink.org/cgi/public_frames?page=ch/2000/april/italiancountry4

It’s absolutely delicious (you can use canned pumpkin, cut back on the recommended amount of cornmeal and use two cups of hot water in the oven pan instead of ice cubes).

UPDATE: I contacted KitchenAid customer service again and was advised that the mixer will only handle 8 cups of “specialty” flour (e.g. whole wheat or bread). When I reminded the representative that the manual makes no mention of this fact, she confirmed that the manual doesn’t include this information and said “that’s what they’re telling us to tell customers”. Also, their “special replacement packages” don’t contain the pouring shield and chute. (Why???) She discussed it with her supervisor, whereupon she advised me that “page 63 of the manual does say that only 8 cups of specialty flour can be used”***. I reminded her that the recipe in question had less than 8 cups of bread flour, that the store which sold the mixer had another explanation for the failures, and asked to speak to her supervisor. She advised me that they would provide yet another replacement with the pouring shield shipped separately.

The supervisor was supposed to call back in 30 minutes, and did get back to me within an hour. We had a sometimes heated, but finally genial discussion (once I established that I really had read the manual and knew what I was doing) with the following upshot:

(1) This mixer model doesn’t seem to have a greater failure rate than older KitchenAid models, to his knowledge. The engineers do review returned mixers for failure causes, but can’t test every recipe involved. He did confirm that they had an early problem with defective switches, but that probably wasn’t the cause of my difficulties.

(2) The bread flour I’m using has a relatively high gluten content (12 - 14%, a hard spring wheat flour for hearth breads), which may increase the stress on the motor. He’s going to check with the engineers…

(3) All 5 quart KitchenAid models are being replaced with 6 quart models; this model did undergo about 1 1/2 years of testing before market release.

(4) Because the motor is fan-cooled, and the fan speed depends on the motor speed, the mixer _must_ be run at speed 2 and _never_ the lower “stir” speed when using the dough hook. A minute of mixing on “stir” was probably what killed the first mixer, but still doesn’t account for the failures of the second and third.

(5) Their laboratory tests showed that mixing times should be very substantially less than specified in most recipes, usually 2 - 3 minutes tops (I don’t find this a completely satisfactory answer since the dough clearly didn’t have full gluten development at 5 minutes). The recipes in the book are tested and provided for new users to gain familiarity with the recipe modifications necessary for this mixer.

(6) The mixer doesn’t actually risk overheating to the point of starting a fire. The part which fails in this situation is the circuit board that serves as the overheat cut-off sensor, not the motor itself.

I did have a much better feeling for the situation after I spoke to him, and he was gracious enough to provide his direct phone number for further feedback. I agreed to try a much shorter mixing time. Watch this space for the results of the next mixer test…

***The actual phrase halfway down page 63 in the “Recipes” section (see my earlier comments about the awkward organization of the manual) is “NEVER use recipes calling for more than 12 cups all-purpose flour or 8 cups whole wheat flour when making dough with a 6 quart mixer”. The peculiar implication of this statement is that the KitchenAid “Professional” mixer probably shouldn’t be used for as much as 6 cups of highly elastic bread flour, even though a $100 bread machine can handle this without difficulty.

Update 3/6/2001: Mixer number 4 is now about to expire. The spouse and I have carefully refrained from even thinking about making bread dough in it. But it can’t handle a 5 cup batch of cookie dough without making what I think of as the “cat in the cement mixer” noise at about 90 decibels. A 2 cup pasta dough recipe stopped the mixer motion almost immediately, though the motor kept humming and it did restart after powering off.

Further polling of classmates and friends who got KitchenAid mixers during the holidays reveals that of five new mixers, four have been returned or replaced in three months, one twice, all for failure to restart or excessive noise.

After a couple of sessions where we couldn’t hear the television or normal conversation two rooms away from the working mixer, we’ve decided to ask for a refund. Watch this space to discover KitchenAid’s response.

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