The Great Bucatini Shortage of 2020

Robin, no, you do not want one. Listen to the words of one of your favorites, Marcella Hazan. "Do not be tempted to buy one of those awful devices that extrude a choice of pasta shapes. What emerges is a mucilaginous and totally contemptible product, and moreover, the contraption is an infuriating nuisance to clean." You always know how she really feels! Watch and try to follow the Pasta Grannies on YouTube. Delightful to watch, theraputic to make and delicious pasta to eventually consume.

ATK REVIEW

KitchenAid Gourmet Pasta Press
While a hand-cranked pasta machine is great for making strands of fettuccine and linguine, it cannot produce tubular or spiral pasta shapes. For that task, you need an extruder. The KitchenAid Gourmet Pasta Press presses pasta dough through one of six interchangeable plates to produce spaghetti, bucatini, rigatoni, fusilli, and large and small macaroni. To test this attachment, we used the pasta dough from the KitchenAid manual to make each shape, used our Master Recipe for Pasta Dough to make rigatoni and fusilli, and used our delicate Gluten-Free Fresh Pasta recipe to make spaghetti. We cleaned the pasta plates with the included cleaning tool after every use and ran the dishwasher-safe parts through the dishwasher repeatedly throughout testing. We evaluated the quality of the pastas and how easy the press was to use and clean.


NOT RECOMMENDED
KitchenAid Gourmet Pasta Press

First of all, if you buy this attachment, you should ignore the included recipe and instructions. The KitchenAid dough we made was too soft (its flour-to-egg ratio is off) and produced fusilli, macaroni, and bucatini with no definition or curve. And the manual’s instruction to operate the press on speed 10? That overheated the gears, causing our $450 stand mixer to irreparably break. Frustratingly, KitchenAid would not replace the broken stand mixer, even though the unit was damaged due to its own attachment’s instructions.



Many phone calls and a new stand mixer (that we had to buy ourselves) later, we saw better results when we operated the attachment at speed 6 (or lower) and used our own pasta recipes. For the most part, the attachment churned out well-formed pasta shapes (we tried all the plates), but it was most successful at making rigatoni and spaghetti. However, the wire pasta cutter at the end of the attachment often pinched the pasta openings together (we couldn’t fix the bucatini, but we were able to pry open the rigatoni ends with our fingers). The machine also took a long time to extrude pasta (about 22 to 27 minutes for a 1-pound batch). Cleaning the pasta plates, which aren’t dishwasher-safe, was a tedious task—we had to use the toothpick-like cleaning tool to poke bits of dried dough out of all the nooks and crannies of the plates. If you’re set on using your stand mixer to extrude your own tubular or spiral pastas, this attachment is an OK option for some shapes, but beware its potential operating and cleanup challenges.

Model: KSMPEXTA Price: $139.99 Accessories: 6 pasta shape disks, cleaning tool, dough pusher Dishwasher-Safe: Pasta ring, auger, and dough pusher on top rack only; disks, cutter, and housing should be cleaned with a soft, damp cloth and dried thoroughly with a soft, dry cloth

I have yet to hear anyone who was happy with the Kitchenaid Pasta Extruder. The roller, yes, though I don't make nearly enough pasta to justify that. Very frustrating that the Kitchenaid in the test was damaged beyond repair. That essentially should never happen. I know they supposedly switched from metal to plastic gears but it's fundamentally not a complicated machine, and the reason why people spend $$$ on it is so they don't have to worry.

Before KA was purchased by Whirlpool, I remember the metal gears, except for one plastic one that I had to purchase a couple of times. It was a deliberate weak point so the other gears wouldn't be ruined if the mixer were overloaded.

[Jenise]

These two things: "The machine also took a long time to extrude pasta (about 22 to 27 minutes for a 1-pound batch)" and "we had to use the toothpick-like cleaning tool to poke bits of dried dough out of all the nooks and crannies of the plates". DEAL BREAKERS.

KA certainly isn't the company it used to be. I have a KA fridge--hate it. I had a KA wine cooler--it conked out after only 7 years and was unrepairable because the part that broke was in a closed system. And I dislike my stand mixer; after my old one died I got the bigger one with the bigger bowls and more power. Unfortunately, there is too much distance between the bottoms of the mixing tools and the bottom of the big bowl such that standard recipe quantities don't get scooped up--a whole layer of flour or whatever sits on the bottom untouched and I have to stand there with a spatula and hand-mix half of it to keep the thing going.

I'll never buy another KA product again.

I feel your pain. I liked KA when it was part of Hobart.

But there is a way to adjust the clearance with the adjusting screw using the dime test:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_v73RMLiRAs

I don't have the Kitchenaid extruder but I do have the 6 quart professional mixer. I was worried when I saw some internet postings about plastic gears so I did some research. They did switch to plastic gears and had nothing but problems with them and switched back. Do I know if I have plastic gears or not, no but based on the date I bought it, there is a good case that I don't.

The one caution I would like to point out is that even though the mixer bowl is rated at 6 quarts, the manual says not to use that much. I've never had a problem making some pretty stiff breads. IMHO, they came out with the larger bowls simply to make life easier for the cook. The bowl is bigger so there's less chance of splashing or overflowing.

[Jenise]

DanS, I bought the 6 quart to replace my original KA when said original literally burned up when trying to mix a stiff bread dough. Going to the 6 quart, I not only had the power for anything, I thought, but room for double batches. Interesting about the gears, I have no idea which I have but certainly power's never been an issue.

What I'm into lately is focaccia, fairly large recipes of loose wet dough. And the dough hook just scoots around the top, never pulling the flour underneath into the dough so I have to stop the machine and manually scrape it up.

So Larry, thank you for the dime test. Did that with the mixer blade and found my machine's set just right. Did not need any adjustment--for the mixer blade. But my dough hook is almost an inch shorter!!!! AND THAT'S WHY IT DOESN'T MIX DOUGH WELL. But at least now I know how to adjust the machine to not have that problem.

A question for the rest of you, are your dough hooks noticeably shorter than your mixer blades? I had no problem going from mixer to dough hook with my original KA.

Warning: babbling ahead.

I own both a K-5 and Epicurean 6-qt mixer (plus an old, broken K-5 made by Hobart and another beat-up one from a restaurant).

Interesting about the geometry. The dough hooks are shaped differently, but measure about the same height together, as do their mixer blades. Both the hook and mixer from the K5 have roughly the same clearance in its bowl; the KAE has higher clearance with its hook in its bowl than the mixer blade (maybe by 1/2 inch). Trying the K5 hook in the KAE has maybe 1/4 inch clearance. Doesn't make much sense, but perhaps the bowls have different shapes.

If a friend has a K5, perhaps you could borrow its hook and mixer to check clearance in your mixer. Confusing for sure. If everything is virtually the same height, why the difference in clearance?

[Jenise]

But in my case, the difference in clearance is explained by the fact that the dough hook is shorter. And they're differently made than the hooks in my original smaller machine. Those were white and factory-smooth/identical, these actually look like they're made from lost-wax method casting. Doesn't make sense that they would be, but they do look handmade.

Is that the way they looked when they were new? Don't these attachments have a porcelain coating?

I googled around a bit and lots of other people have noticed what you have noticed. About a third of people are told to adjust the head height, a third of people say they use the paddle anyway, and a third of people start talking moisture percentages and my eyes glaze over.

Is that the way they looked when they were new? Don't these attachments have a porcelain coating?

.:

The attachments may be white porcelainized or powder coated, but eventually the coating chips off. I'd prefer a plain stainless steel dough hook.

DanS, I bought the 6 quart to replace my original KA when said original literally burned up when trying to mix a stiff bread dough. Going to the 6 quart, I not only had the power for anything, I thought, but room for double batches. Interesting about the gears, I have no idea which I have but certainly power's never been an issue.

What I'm into lately is focaccia, fairly large recipes of loose wet dough. And the dough hook just scoots around the top, never pulling the flour underneath into the dough so I have to stop the machine and manually scrape it up.

Here is the capacity chart from the manual for my machine. For the larger machines flour capacity is 13 to 14 cups. For the smaller machine it is 10 to 12 cups.

[Jenise]

Jeff, white/coasted on the smaller KA-5 but not my larger machine. These look like aluminum. Dan, yours too?

The quantity chart's interesting. About 9-10 cups fried my KA-5.

I use the regular Kitchenaid tilt head mixer and have found it to be very good, although the larger fixed head has more grunt. As a bit of a completist I also have most of the accessories, though I don't use them all equally. I use the pasta roller to make Jenise's fave dish, the raviolo with an egg yolk lurking inside, and have no complaints with it.

The extruder works less perfectly and the people that have damaged theirs by following incorrect instructions must have no mechanical feeling - if the machine labours, slow it down for heaven's sake, don't just trash it by continuing to push it on the assumption that of the instructions say something it is gospel.

The only thing I have qualms about with the KA mixer (we also have range and fridge by them) is the ice cream maker, which seems to become incontinent with use (who among us can say otherwise, I suppose) and starts leaking blue antifreeze at which point you need to buy a new one. We continue to use it as I like unsweetened sorbets for dinner use and SWMBO is addicted to blueberry ice cream (the season for which is upon us as I type).