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I got my KitchenAid stand mixer when I was 27 years old. My boss gave me a cash card for the holidays and like any normal person in his mid-20s making a low salary, I turned around and bought the only expensive item one can actually count on receiving from their wedding registry. I made cakes, I whipped cream, I did the things you do with a stand mixer, but for well over a decade, I never bothered to learn about (or even think about, really) the white hook that came in the box with the other attachments. Throughout the 2010s that item was, to me, a nuisance that I had to move in and out of the bowl every time I wanted to use the mixer because I had nowhere to store it. I was a fool.
The hook, of course, is a dough hook, and since I started using it to knead for me I’ve become a more efficient, and I might even say a happier person in the kitchen. The dough hook takes the elbow grease out of pizza dough, pasta dough, and all kinds of yeasted breads—if it’s something you plan to stretch and shape in any way, you can probably use a dough hook for it.
Since I assume that if you are reading this you may be like the 27-year-old version of me and not be familiar with the dough hook, using it is very simple. Just put all the wet and dry ingredients in the bowl of the stand mixer and mix them with whatever you have—a wooden spoon, a Danish dough whisk, your hands, you can even use just stir the contents of the bowl with the dough hook itself—until it just comes together. Then lock the bowl into the mixer, set it on low (I use “2” on my KitchenAid) and let the machine work. Some recipes may give a kneading time, but I generally let it run for about eight minutes on things like pizza dough and have never had problems with overworked dough.
Of course, there are advantages to kneading by hand, specifically that you can feel when you’ve gotten your dough just where you want it. I’ve read a couple descriptions of pizza dough that suggest the kneaded product is done when it feels like a baby’s butt, and unfortunately the KitchenAid doesn’t come with a baby’s butt setting. What I will say is that the simple little hook has cut my workload tremendously. I don’t need floured hands and generously floured cutting boards any more. The dough hook makes me feel like making some kind of bread multiple times a week is easily achievable.
Don’t be like me, leaving your poor dough hook sitting unused and neglected in the cupboard. It’s there to make the bread making portion of your life easier. So let it.
