I tired an experiment or two on my KA spiral dough hook in an effort to reduce the chance of the dough sticking to the hook.
First, I polished up the working area of the dough hook, using a green Scotch Brand scrub pad, until it looked almost like it was chromed. This polishing takes all of the minor surface imperfections out of the Aluminum and provides a slick surface, which I hoped would minimize dough sticking. While I never had particularly bad sticking, I don’t believe the polishing make much of an improvement in reducing the sticking. This was not a major concern, as it would be a lot of work keeping the hook well polished and I was hoping the solution would be what I perceived as the next logical step, as documented below.
I used the hook for several weeks, only cleaning it with soap and water; no abrasive cleaning at all. This allowed the Aluminum oxide coating (that grayish blotchy coating on any raw aluminum) to build until it completely and uniformly covered the dough hook. This coating, over the highly polished aluminum, seems to help keep my dough from sticking to the hook.
I spent about half an hour, working the scotch pad over the hook to polish it up. I have not found much difference between oiling, or not oiling, the hook before I start mixing, but do anyway. I hope that this might help someone else.
Jack, like several others on the forum, a Pizza baking Enginerd
