Ode to My KitchenAid Mixer

Today I taught someone how to make bread on Zoom using the dough hook.
“I’m Amish now,” she told me. 
“Well with electricity and everything else,” she laughs.
Pandemic Amish we call it. 
I am definitely not Amish. 
I’ve watched Amish women beat flour into a thick ball with a wooden spoon,
then lay it out on their wooden counters and knead, their well worn hands graceful.
I use my KitchenAid hook instead. 

It was a wedding gift.
How she afforded it, I have no idea.
She had quit her job to go to seminary.
She was rearing three boys at the same time.
I still don’t know how she did it, graduating in three years.
“I can’t go to your wedding,” she explained.
“I would have spent money to get there so I figure I’ll spend it on your gift.
I’m buying you a KitchenAid.
You’re going to need it making all that food for those children you are going to have.”
How did she know?

My mom had a KitchenAid earlier than most.
She loved it so much she bought one with deluxe extra parts for my grandma.
They both got quilted handmade covers for their mixers.
I wonder who made those covers? 
It was probably a church lady who sold them at a fair, 
patterns distributed during choir practice, 
benefits to the Sunday school program.
I learned how to cream butter for cookies in my mom’s white KitchenAid 
that tucked in the corner of her kitchen,
just like mine tucks into my corner now
snug under the cabinets.
You didn’t need to soften the butter. The mixer did it.
I learned to slowly add flour so it didn’t spray everywhere in my grandma’s kitchen.
She was a tidy baker. I’m not.

My mom’s KitchenAid finally broke one day. 
The engine just died.
Everything was always breaking in our old house.
Appliances. Plumping. Cars.
She would swear when this happened.
Something serious like dammit.
She would then mumble under her breath about old houses, my father, 
stress pouring out of her. 
When her KitchenAid died she smiled.
“It doesn’t owe me a thing,” she said.
“It’s been working for over 25 years.
The best appliance I’ve ever owned.”
She bought a new one.
Cobalt blue and no flour encrusted gears.

Mine is white.
It looks exactly like the one my dad brought home for my mom. 
They seem to be a standard wedding gift these days. 
They often collect dust, tucked away, rarely used.
My KitchenAid never collects dust.
It’s used multiple times a week: pancakes, bread, muffins, cookies, cakes, 
eggs whipped to perfection, 
butter and powdered sugar transformed into frosting, 
leftover morning oatmeal smoothed into the beginning of bread dough, 
cream made into fluffy whipped cream on a June night to top fresh strawberries, 
sticky cinnamon rolls for Christmas morning, 
not to mention cut out cookies for every holiday...
How do you bake love into the world without a KitchenAid?

How did the women who made bread for Jesus’ last supper do it without a KitchenAid?
How did my grandma make all of her children’s birthday cakes without a KitchenAid?
How did they get the egg whites to peak?
Did they remember to soften the butter early in the morning?
Were they able to whip up as much love?

I have baked love into the world with my trusty KitchenAid.
My seminary friend knew I would before I did.
That kitchenaid has made two wedding cakes and more birthday cakes than I can count.
Communion bread: dozens upon dozens of loaves.
Countless desserts delivered to those who need something sweet in their life 
because they have recently lost
because you can’t make things okay for people but you can deliver some fresh baked bread
because a baby has arrived and sugar is just the thing
because you can truly bake love into the world with a KitchenAid.
My KitchenAid and I have moved to four different homes together 
and taken many rides in my minivan to teach at my children’s school: 
cooking classes that invariably always became baking classes.
And just this morning a Zoom class.
Who knew we would have such a following,
make such an impact.

Thank you KitchenAid.
Together you and I have baked love into each cake, each cookie, each loaf of bread.
We have done good work.
Here’s to hoping you last another 5 years.
I think when your engine gives out, your gears too clogged with flour, 
I will say these familiar words over you: well done faithful servant.
I will stick with the white model again. Not a shiny cobalt blue.  
It seems more authentic. 
More true to our relationship that began when I was little, 
standing on a stool, beside my mother, learning how to make cookies. 


All THREE Paddle Attachements Kitchenaid
Oatmeal Bread

1. The night before or early in the morning while you are unloading the dishwasher, boil some water. Measure out 1 cup of oatmeal. Add 1 ½ cups of boiling water to oatmeal. Leave be.
2. When you remember, add three Tbsp of butter, a pinch of salt, and honey or molasses to oatmeal. How much honey or molasses? I don’t know. I just pour some in. Molasses makes a rich bread, honey a sweeter bread. Use whatever you have. Pour in. How about a ½  a cup. Don’t worry. If you put in too much it will just be wonderfully sweet.
3. When you remember you have this oatmeal glob waiting for you to make bread get out your trusty kitchenaid.
4. Put on the whipper paddle. This is not the official kitchenaid name, but my affectionate nickname. The whipper paddle looks like a whisk. Add two cups of warm water to the bowl and two packets of yeast or 1 Tbsp and 1 tsp of yeast. Whip away on high. You might need to scrap the bowl to incorporate all of the yeast.
5. What do I mean by warm water? This is crucial for yeast bread. I mean water you would wash a baby in. I mean water that is not hot and water warm enough that would take a shower in it under duress. I do not mean water that is just barely warm that you would not shower in. How’s that for an explanation?
6. Add oatmeal glob to yeast water. Mix
7. Change paddles to your cookie making paddle. That would be the paddle I use to cream butter and also use instead of a pastry cutter. It’s flat. 
8. Add two cups of whole wheat flour and a ½ cup of any other funky flour/grain you would like to add such as flax, hemp, whatever. If you don’t have a collection of odd flours like I do, just ignore this step. 
9. Let this oatmeal flour yeast concoction mix on low for about five minutes. You are activating the gluten at this point. 
10. The final paddle change to the dough hook. It looks like a hook. I bet you’ve never used it before. It’s incredible. 
11. Add one cup of bread flour or plain old white flour at a time to the mixture. You should add about six cups. 
12. When will you be done? When the dough hook creates a ball. If there are little flour nibblets in the bottom of the bowl, ignore them. 
13. If the ball is having a hard time coming together lay it on your counter and knead for a minute or two. You might need a bit of flour or to water your hands. Is your dough too dry, too wet?
14. Generously butter a bowl before placing dough in the bowl. Turn dough over to get all sides covered in butter. Dampen a towel and place over dough. Let dough rise for at least two hours in a warm spot in your house. Speak lovingly to your dough and tell it to do its job.
15. When dough has doubled in size, punch down and divide into two loaf greased pans, sometimes three depending on how much it has risen. Sort of from bread loaves with your hands before placing in loaf pans. 
16. Cover pans with rewet cloth and let rise for at least another ½ hour. 
17. Bake bread at 400 for first ten minutes then lower temperature to 350. Bake for another 30 minutes.
18. Eat immediately with butter. 

A little fun history via Wikipedia with my commentary: 
The first machine to carry the KitchenAid name was the ten-quart C-10 model, introduced in 1918 and built at Hobart's Troy Metal Products subsidiary in Springfield, Ohio. Prototype models were given to the wives of factory executives (of course not the laborers whose wives had less time and needed more help), and the product was named when one wife stated "I don't care what you call it, but I know it's the best kitchen aid I've ever had!" They were initially marketed to the farmhouse kitchen and were available in hardware stores. But owing to the difficulty in convincing retailers to take up the product (and that farm women didn’t have enough money to buy something seemingly so unpractical), the company recruited a mostly female sales force (duh, of course!), which sold the mixers door to door. 

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