KitchenAid Classic K45SS Review: Good Enough for Pizza?

The default kitchen mixer, and what it will and will not do with pizza dough.

Specifications

Specifications above come from KitchenAid's published specifications for the K45SS. Treat pricing as approximate, since Amazon pricing moves.

What it does well

• It is the most versatile machine in this group by a distance. Dough is one job among many, and the attachment hub turns it into a pasta roller, a grinder and more.
• Small batches suit it, which is the exact opposite of the bulk machines. Two or three dough balls is comfortable territory.
• Ten speeds with a genuinely slow stir setting, which is the only speed you should mix pizza dough on anyway.
• The bowl is stainless and dishwasher safe, so a sticky 65 percent hydration dough is not a cleaning problem.
• Parts, bowls, beaters and hooks are available everywhere, which is not a small thing for a machine you intend to own for twenty years.

Where it falls short

• It is a tilt-head machine and stiff dough is what tilt-head machines are worst at. Overload the bowl and the head lifts, the hook rides up and the dough stops being worked.
• KitchenAid's stated capacity figure is a cookie figure, 8 dozen at 28 g each using the flat beater, not a pizza dough figure. Do not read it as a dough rating.
• A planetary hook drags the dough around a static bowl, which puts friction and therefore heat into it. On a warm day that is enough to move your fermentation schedule.
• The listed price of $399 is one you should very rarely pay. This model has been in production for decades and is discounted heavily and often, so check before buying at list.
• The dough hook is coated rather than bare metal, and owners who work stiff dough hard report coating wear over years of use.

What owners report

The K45SS has been sold for long enough that owner consensus is about as settled as it gets. Two things come up repeatedly and both are about dough rather than the rest of the machine. The first is longevity: people report using the same mixer for fifteen or twenty years, which is the strongest argument for buying it. The second is that heavy dough is where owners run into trouble, and the reports describe exactly the failure mode you would predict, a head that lifts under load and a hook that climbs.

The practical advice that comes out of those reports is consistent and worth following: mix pizza dough on speed 1 or 2 only, keep the batch modest, and rest the dough for a few minutes mid-mix if the machine is fighting you. Work your batch out on the dough ball weight calculator before you decide whether it fits, because dough weight scales with pizza area rather than diameter and a 16 inch batch is much bigger than it looks.

Who it suits

• Households making two to six pizzas at a time.
• Anyone who wants one machine that also creams butter, whips egg whites and takes a pasta roller.
• Kitchens where the mixer has to look like it belongs on the counter.
• Anyone buying their first real mixer, since this is the cheapest way into a platform that lasts decades.

Who should skip it

• Bulk bakers. Above about 1.5 kg of stiff dough this is the wrong machine and the Bosch Universal Plus is the right one.
• Anyone chasing the lowest possible final dough temperature, where a spiral mixer wins clearly.
• People who only make pizza and never bake anything else, for whom a $199 food processor with a dough blade is faster and cheaper.
• Anyone about to pay full list price without checking, because this model is discounted very frequently.

Alternatives worth considering

Where it fits in the rest of the kit

The single most useful thing you can do before buying any mixer is find out how much dough you actually make. The dough ball weight calculator gives you a total in grams from a pizza count and a diameter, and a 4.5 quart bowl comfortably covers roughly 1 to 1.5 kg of finished pizza dough. Above that, the Bosch Universal Plus is the machine that stops complaining, and for cooler, gentler mixing at modest volumes the Ooni Halo Core is the specialist.

If the price is the sticking point, read stand mixer versus food processor for dough before committing, because a $199 food processor makes a perfectly good same day dough in under a minute. The dough mixer roundup covers the whole category by tier. And whichever machine mixes it, the schedule afterwards is what makes the pizza: the proof time calculator and the cold fermentation guide matter more to the finished crust than the mixer does.

Keep reading

• Stand mixer vs food processor for dough
• Best dough mixers for pizza, by tier
• Dough ball weight calculator
• Cuisinart Pro Custom 11 review
• Ooni Halo Core review
• How to make Neapolitan pizza dough

This review draws on published specifications, manufacturer figures and the consensus of verified owner reviews. We have not tested this product ourselves, and we say so rather than implying otherwise. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.