First impressions and review of the Famag IM-5S Spiral mixer

[Jackie Tran]

Chau,

I challenge you to a shootout: spiral vs. fork. Same ingredients, same ratios, protocols, same ovens, different mixers.

Sounds fun.  Bill do you want me to make both the doughs or will you be making the fork mixer dough?

[Bill/SFNM]

Bill do you want me to make both the doughs or will you be making the fork mixer dough?

What if I made dough using your protocol in my fork mixer? You could bring your spiral-mixed dough to my house and we could do side-by-side baking. Worst case we have fun and eat good pizza.

[Bill/SFNM]

Worstest case I end up selling my fork mixer and buying a Famag. 

[Jackie Tran]

 ::)Here are the pies from batch 1.  They were pretty good but not nearly as good as the pies from 2 days ago or the pies from the very first Famag mix. A drop of the lard by 1% and thus decrease in hydration by 1% and a stronger mix produced an inferior texture, if all else was equal.  I also stretched the 2nd pie less which produced an even bigger difference.  Even though these look like my previous pies, a small change can produce drastically different results. 

[Jackie Tran]

What if I made dough using your protocol in my fork mixer? You could bring your spiral-mixed dough to my house and we could do side-by-side baking. Worst case we have fun and eat good pizza.

Bill we can definitely do that.    A better and truer test would be for me to make both doughs as I can stop the mixers at different points in the mixes and test for dough strength.   I would also factor in your expertise on your fork mixer such as best order for ingredients to go into the mixer and any specific mixing tricks or protocols.  We could also examine the dough at different stages of fermentation, bulk and balling,, all the way up until the bake.   If I made both doughs and balled both, it would give a more consistent picture.  I would have to stay the night.  We could make dough one evening and bake it the next afternoon or evening.  So a 20-24hr Rm temp dough would be a good test.    Also you could make some tester batches of your own dough in the Famag.  That might give an idea of it's usability and how it would work for you.  We can kick around the idea some more. 

[Jackitup]

Chau,

I challenge you to a shootout: spiral vs. fork. Same ingredients, same ratios, protocols, same ovens, different mixers.

Record it or it didn't happen! We want a video!!!😊

[quietdesperation]

just found this thread, making popcorn now...

[Bill/SFNM]

Bill we can definitely do that.    A better and truer test would be for me to make both doughs as I can stop the mixers at different points in the mixes and test for dough strength.   I would also factor in your expertise on your fork mixer such as best order for ingredients to go into the mixer, any specify mixing tricks or protocols.  We could also examine the dough at different stages of fermentation,bulk and balling,, all the way up until the bake.   If I made both doughs and balled both, it would give a clearer picture.  I would have to stay the night.  We could make dough one evening and bake it the next afternoon or evening.  So a 20-24hr Rm temp dough would be a good test.    Also you could make some tester batches of your own dough in the Famag.  That might give you an idea of usability and how it would work for you.  We can kick around the idea some more.

Sounds like a great idea! We could even live stream to YouTube.

[jsobolew]

I just tried the reverse technique in my IM-10 to help pick up those loose bits of flour along the edge of the bowl. While the reverse feature does help a good amount, it's not 100%. As previously stated by another, it does cause the dough to climb up the spiral and get gunked up so I recommend using it only on a very slow setting for only about 1 rotation at a time while watching it. It greatly reduced the amount that I needed to put my hands in the bowl the mix around the flour at the bottom that otherwise wouldn't get picked up.

[Jackie Tran]

Jsobolew, I haven't noticed that problem with my IM-5S.  I mixed a 1500gm dough batch tonight on spd 4 straight without any issues.   I add all the flour into the bowl and pour ice cold water in incrementally right away over 2 min or so.  A little at a time.  Once the dough formed I did noticed dry flour and bits in the corner but decided not to intervene.   After 5-6 minutes of mixing, maybe longer the dough eventually picked it all up and cleaned the bowl.  I divided the batch of dough after the mix into 3rds and didn't see or feel and unmixed lumps. 

[lennyk]

When you go to larger batches where the entire bottom of bowl is covered with dough ball is when you may have issues with dry clumps.

[jsobolew]

When you go to larger batches where the entire bottom of bowl is covered with dough ball is when you may have issues with dry clumps.

Yep. My batches are almost always pretty large and that's the case.

[lennyk]

I am doing 6kg total batches in my im8s and once I make sure the first third of flour is well mixed with the water the remaining thirds doesnt  get clumps

plus the 5% water added halfway thru helps clean the sides.

I think they key is to not have a big mass of flour hitting the water and sinking to the bottom of the bowl and forming a dry clump.

If the first third is well mixed with the water, the thick slurry kinda cushions any future flour from reaching the bottom and sticking in a dry mess.

Yep. My batches are almost always pretty large and that's the case.

[billg]

Hey guys,
Just wanted to share a picture of dough that I made with the Sunmix10.  I purposely wanted to see what would happen if I mixed the dough for much longer than I normally would (25 minutes), allowing the FDT to reach 82f.  The recipe was 966 grams of Ap flour from King Arthur (non bleached), 599 grams water ( cold with ice cubes), 25.1 grams salt, and 0.16 grams IDY.  The dough was build fermented at 72f for 18 hours, then balled.  The dough doubled in size.  When I went to ball the dough it was so airy and light and somewhat difficult to ball smoothly.  The picture speaks for itself.  My goal was to purposely try and over heat the dough and make it utterly useless.  I'm going to see what happens when I try to form the skins to see how the dough will perform.  I am going to cross post this in Chau's Famag thread to share results with home spiral mixers so we can all learn from each other.  Time will tell if it is totally useless or not.  From what I can tell now, I've done a lot worse trying not to screw up than by purposely trying!  These have been balled for 4.5 hours.

[Jackie Tran]

Nice experiment.   What I noticed with mine was that the balls didn't really relax even with an extended proof.  The dough balls were hard to open without tearing, big oven spring in the rim.  The crumb was surprisingly not tough but a little chewy as expected.

[billg]

Here's a great read to help determine the friction factor of your mixer written by Tom Lehmann.  I've been working on this all week to try to determine the friction factor of my mixer which I believe ranges from 40-50f.


https://www.pmq.com/hot-stuff-temperatures-explained#:~:text=The%20friction%20factor%20is%20determined%20as%20follows%3A%203,for%20each%20different%20size%2C%20dough%20that%20you%20make.

[Pete-zza]

billg,

Sometimes long links can go dead, so here is an abbreviated one:

https://www.pmq.com/hot-stuff-temperatures-explained

Tom's work on friction factor and related matters was also archived at the Wayback Machine at:

https://web.archive.org/web/20070502014430/http://www.pmq.com/mag/2003spring/tom_lehmann.shtml

Peter

[BeanAnimal]

Extremely Interesting thread!

Possibly dumb question.  I have a WFO and I have quickly determined that I am less a fan of softy silky NP and more of a classic fan. That is I like bit of chew with the crisp and also a huge NY Style fan and desire to perfect both styles in my WFO.

Apart from the benefits for breads, pastas, etc.  Does the spiral mixer translate well to the classical and NY style doughs?  I have wanted to pull the trigger on a sunmix for a while but am not sure if it will offer benefit for those styles.

[billg]

Extremely Interesting thread!

Possibly dumb question.  I have a WFO and I have quickly determined that I am less a fan of softy silky NP and more of a classic fan. That is I like bit of chew with the crisp and also a huge NY Style fan and desire to perfect both styles in my WFO.

Apart from the benefits for breads, pastas, etc.  Does the spiral mixer translate well to the classical and NY style doughs?  I have wanted to pull the trigger on a sunmix for a while but am not sure if it will offer benefit for those styles.

They are great for all kinds of dough!  Extremely versatile. 

[Jackie Tran]

Extremely Interesting thread!

Possibly dumb question.  I have a WFO and I have quickly determined that I am less a fan of softy silky NP and more of a classic fan. That is I like bit of chew with the crisp and also a huge NY Style fan and desire to perfect both styles in my WFO.

Apart from the benefits for breads, pastas, etc.  Does the spiral mixer translate well to the classical and NY style doughs?  I have wanted to pull the trigger on a sunmix for a while but am not sure if it will offer benefit for those styles.

That is a really good question.  While I do agree with BillG that it's works well for all manner of doughs I will say that yes I have noticed that in switching from the Kitchen Aide to the Spiral, I have noticed that the end product is a bit softer and less chewy.  And that small adjustments may have to be made if you like a crispier more chewy crust.