Under Review: KitchenAid Bread Bowl with Lid

Our friends at Beam were very kind in sorting a free sample of this new accessory for the KitchenAid stand mixers. I myself don’t have a KitchenAid, because I inherited a Kenwood from a lovely auntie, but Andrew let me borrow Babette’s pale yellow stand mixer, a well-used and loved machine, which featured in a lot of the classes Babette and I ran.

The bread bowl feels lovely, heavy ceramic with a light speckled finish to the glaze. It comes with a few recipes to get you started and this helped me understand the capacity of the bowl and how it was designed to work. There are some great videos and recipes on KitchenAid’s website.

The biggest benefit of the bread bowl is that it is an all-in-one accessory that you can mix in, proof in, and bake in. For someone new to baking who only wants one piece of equipment, this could really make sense. It works well as a mixing bowl and a bread baker. 

The confident baker could use a banneton for the second proofing, which, because it is much shallower than the bowl, allows a gentler transfer of the dough to the lid for baking. 

Once it gets into the oven, the mixing bowl and lid create the perfect steamy environment for the loaf to rise (oven spring) and create a crispy crust. Because the bottom of the bread is baking on the lid, the bread slides right off when done. All in all, whilst I think the product could be improved by making the bowl shallower, it succeeds as an all-in-one accessory for creating tasty, crispy bread.

• Easy to clean
• Two inner marks to gauge the rise of dough
• Can store bread in it afterwards
• Tip - Use parchment when placing the dough on the lid before baking (lots of reviews say the dough sticks)
• I saw one review that said you don’t have to have a stand mixer to use it and I guess that’s true, you could mix by hand, prove and bake.
• Easy to follow recipes to get you started. Bit prescriptive though with timings. A new baker might get put off.
• Mix, prove, bake means less washing up!

So, as the tester of this product I really like the concept. Whether it’s the right product for me, I’m pretty sure it isn’t. I am an on / off bread maker, I go through phases where I love bread making and then one bad bake can put me off. Also, I only do sourdough or artisan hybrid loafs (starter plus a tiny bit of yeast to speed things up if I want a 6hr proof not a 12 or 24hr proof) plus (and I’m not showing off) I don’t tend to weigh my ingredients anymore (why my baking is a bit hit and miss?).

So, all of these things mean the bread bowl has some restrictions for me, but I know lots of bakers who stick to recipes and would get a lot of enjoyment out of the fact this bowl offers so much in the complete process of bread making.

It's also a great second bowl when you’re not making bread too!