For those who have a hobby of making cakes, you must be familiar with mixers. This cooking utensil has become a must-have item because of its function as a stirrer for ingredients to make cake dough.
It turns out that there are various types of mixers that are sold in the market and of course have different functions. For someone who wants to learn on how to make cakes, it is really important to know the following types of mixers and their functions:
1. Whisk
It can be said that whisk is the simplest type of mixer and is easy to use. Because of its simple shape, it is not surprising that the function of whisk is only to stir the dough in small amounts, starting from beating eggs to making pancake batter.
In addition, to use a whisk it takes power that comes from hands and not from a machine. If you make cake dough using a whisk for a long time, it can make you feel tired.
Generally, whisk is made of thick flexible wire that is shaped like a balloon. Even though there are various types of whisks that can be adjusted to your needs, ranging from balloon whisk, French whisk, spiral whisk, flat whisk, and ball whisk. As for the handle is made of stainless steel or wood.
2. Hand Mixer
This type of mixer is the most widely owned mixer for the household scale. As the name implies, to use this mixer, you must always hold it by hand because it does not have a special support and container.
Even so, a hand mixer can be used to stir large amounts of ingredients because it uses electricity as a power source, very different from a whisk which is used to stir ingredients in small quantities. The hand mixer has a fairly light weight so that users do not feel tired when using this mixer.
In addition to being lightweight, hand mixers are also easy to carry, easy to store, do not take up much space, and most importantly easy to clean.
3. Stand Mixer
At first glance, this mixer is not much different from a hand mixer. The thing that distinguishes it is that the stand mixer has a fixed stand and is equipped with a bowl as a container for mixing ingredients.
No wonder the stand mixer is more stable when being operated and does not need to be held like a hand mixer. The container contained in the stand mixer is quite large, but for a household scale the average is only 5 liters per stir.
Stand mixer uses electricity as a power source. Its motor power is much greater than a hand mixer. No wonder the stand mixer can stir more dough.
With the features it has, it is not surprising that the price of a stand mixer is more expensive than a hand mixer. In addition, this mixer requires a large space, cannot be moved, and is quite difficult to clean.
4. Spiral Mixer
Spiral mixer is a mixer that is specialized for mixing thick and tough dough such as bread and noodle dough. The size is also quite large, no wonder if this mixer is used on an industrial scale.
The average capacity of the spiral mixer ranges from 10 liters to 50 liters for one stirring. The price of a spiral mixer is quite expensive because of the features and power of the machine it has.
The way the spiral mixer works is by rotating the mixer bowl and simultaneously the hook or stirrer also rotates to knead the dough. No wonder the resulting dough will be more elastic, especially for bread dough.
5. Dough Mixer
Dough mixer or horizontal bread dough mixer is a machine used to mix various kinds of special bread ingredients. Not only that, this machine can also be used to mix noodle ingredients, dumpling skins, and others.
The main function of a dough mixer is to mix various ingredients into one to produce the perfect dough. The more perfectly the dough is mixed, the better the resulting dough will be.
The size of the dough mixer is quite large (capacity 50 kg), do not be surprised if this machine is widely used by the bakery industries.
6. Planetary Mixer
At first glance, a planetary mixer has the same shape as a spiral mixer, only that the functions of the two are different. The planetary mixer is equipped with a static bowl attached to the base of the mixer.
While being used to knead the dough, the bowl will be raised and lowered when the mixing process is complete. To take the dough, simply remove the bowl from the mixer frame.
As the name implies, the planetary mixer works like the rotation of the planets. In this case the shaker of the mixer rotates around the bowl as the planets move around the Sun.
Planetary mixer is equipped with three speeds ranging from low, medium, and high speed. You can adjust it to your needs.
Not only that, this mixer also has additional accessories in the form of dough hook (stirring cake and bread dough), mixing paddle (stirring pastry and croissant dough), and whisk (stirring liquid ingredients such as milk, whipped cream, mayonnaise).