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I have a standard mixer that can be put on a stand and its motor has 400W of power. Since it struggles with some doughs and I don't really like its mixing I decided to buy a stand "Planetary Mixer"* (i.e. a non-commercial Stand Mixer with "Planetary Mixing Action"), however I am not sure what wattage I should look for. I certainly won't use it for commercial uses and can't figure out if, say, 800W would be too much.

I also don't know if I can ask here about advice on the model of mixer? Since I am looking for one that has metal gearing and dishwasher safe beaters/parts but am finding it hard to find any information about different models.

* Planetary action means that the beaters rotate on their axis similarly to the way the Earth rotates. Like a planetary system, the whole mixer head then rotates the opposite way, similar to the way the Earth rotates around the sun. This ensures that the sides of the bowl are scraped by the beater rather than having to do it by hand, and that the ingredients become fully mixed.

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  • There is no "too much" with that kind of device unless you are concerned about power usage, safety in case of misuse or noise. Dec 5, 2016 at 9:50
  • The 800 W or whatever is slightly misleading. It's not just how much power you're using, but how you're using it. For example, on America's Test Kitchen, they found some of the lower wattage Kitchenaid mixers outperformed some of the competition with a higher wattage rating. Given two mixers with identical performance and reliability and what not but different wattage, you'd want to get the one with the lower wattage rating.
    – Batman
    Dec 5, 2016 at 20:40

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I have a Kitchen Aid 5 quart Pro lift model stand mixer. It is rated at 450 watts. It can handle a recipe using 1,000 grams (about 8 cups) of King Arthur Whole Wheat flour and yields two 5" X 9" loaves. A-P flour requires less power to knead than whole wheat.

More power usually comes with a bigger bowl and small recipes are going to get lost in such a large mixer

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