The 7 Best Stand Mixers for Bread of 2023, Tested and Reviewed

Best Overall

KitchenAid Artisan Series 5-Quart Tilt-Head Stand Mixer

4.8

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Our Ratings

• Design
  5/5
• Performance
  5/5
• Size
  4/5
• Features
  5/5
• Value
  5/5

Bread machines are great, but you can make bread without them. Combining the ingredients in a stand mixer and oven-baking is another reliable method. The KitchenAid Artisan Series stand mixer might be the most iconic model out there, known for its durability and performance when mixing everything from meringues to pizza dough.

With 10 speeds and a 325-watt motor, this model features a 5-quart mixing bowl and standard paddle, dough hook, and whip attachments (with a power hub to use with a multitude of additional attachments). Weighing in at 23 pounds, this stand mixer will stay in place without worry while in operation, and the tilt-head mechanism allows for easy removal of the mixing bowl. 

Our home tester found that the Artisan mixer was able to mix up both bread dough and pasta dough without an issue. Having a machine that can smoothly transition from mixing pasta dough to rolling it out is a huge labor, time, and storage advantage when it comes to home pasta-making. In the Lab, our tester found that this machine is most effective at kneading dough at lower speeds, which helps the dough hook really latch onto the dough and keeps the machine from overworking.

We noticed that the machine does begin to shake more with thicker bread doughs, but the weight of the machine keeps it anchored to the counter. Additionally, the motor of the stand mixer became a little warm after mixing for over 20 minutes, but the planetary mixing components showed no signs of struggling.

For lighter-weight projects, the Artisan KitchenAid Mixer smoothly tackled every task we threw at it, including cookie dough and churning butter for fresh heavy cream. The handle on the bowl is a plus (allowing you to retain a firm grip while scraping bread dough out of the bowl), as well as the coated dough hook (making it dishwasher-safe). Since the machine is often a constant fixture on the counter, it also helps that there are 29 available finishes, allowing you to color-coordinate with your kitchen decor. For home bakers who want to do it all, this mixer is a reliable and uncompromising choice.

Price at time of publish: $450

Number of Speeds: 10 | Power: 325 watts | Bowl Volume: 5 quarts | Attachments: 1 beater, 1 dough hook, 1 wire whip

Best Budget

Hamilton Beach 6-Speed Stand Mixer

4.2

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Our Ratings

• Design
  4/5
• Performance
  4/5
• Size
  4/5
• Features
  3.5/5
• Value
  5/5

For the price, the 300-watt Hamilton Beach 6-Speed Stand Mixer does a decent job at mixing most bread dough and batters for quick breads. “The Hamilton is great for smaller batches and for softer doughs,” says Kelsey Weber, food & product stylist at KR Food Styling. “For the price point, this mixer will be a great addition for a novice baker.”

Our home product tester agrees: "The mixer seemed to strain just a little, but it still gave me a silky-smooth dough...It would be a great mixer for bakers with more modest needs," she notes. During testing, she also noted that the folding option (in addition to the appliance's six speeds) is particularly useful for delicate ingredients, as well as the initial slow mixing of dry ingredients.

In the Lab, our tester noticed that "the shape of the dough hook actually helps the mixer to incorporate dry ingredients from the edges of the bowl," which cuts down on how often you'll need to stop the machine and scrape down the sides. The machine is a little louder than some of the other stand mixer models we tested alongside it, but it didn't overheat or show signs of struggling while mixing. To make up for the lighter overall weight, the mixer has suction cups on the bottom to help anchor it to the counter.

Similar to KitchenAid, it has a planetary mixing action that allows the attachment to revolve around the bowl to ensure even mixing. Unlike the KitchenAid models, it's only available in black and has a more contemporary boxy design. This model includes a 3.5-quart capacity stainless-steel mixing bowl, dough hook, wire whisk, and plastic paddle. While this machine comes at a nice price and mixes lighter ingredients with impressive ease, it can handle the occasional small batch of denser dough for bakers looking to get started with bread-making.

Price at time of publish: $105

Number of Speeds: 6 | Power: 300 watts | Bowl Volume: 3.5 quarts | Attachments: 1 plastic beater, 1 dough hook, 1 wire whip

Best Countertop Display

SMEG Retro Style 5 Qt. Tilt-Head Stand Mixer

4.5

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Our Ratings

• Design
  5/5
• Performance
  4.5/5
• Size
  4/5
• Features
  4.5/5
• Value
  4.5/5

The Italian brand SMEG is known best for quality appliances in stylish, award-winning retro designs, and the brand's stand mixer does not disappoint. This compact mixer has a die-cast aluminum housing with a powder-coated enamel finish reminiscent of a classic car, complete with chrome accents and gearshift-like speed control on the top of the unit. It’s available in more than half a dozen attractive colors that match all of the other SMEG appliances you may have or want.

Like many other mixer brands, the SMEG comes with the trinity of attachments (flat beater, wire whisk, and dough hook) and a pouring shield. But the SMEG brand doesn’t get by on looks alone—when it comes to performance, this machine keeps up with the KitchenAid Artisan Series with its similar planetary mixing action, 10 speeds, and tilt-head design. In fact, this mixer boasts an 800-watt motor, more than twice the power as the KitchenAid version, and it has the “Smooth" start function, which starts the machine with a slower initial speed to prevent ingredient splatter.

In our Lab tests, our tester noted that the machine's instructions specifically recommend not mixing doughs above speed two, which is good practice for most stand mixers. Even at a lower speed, the SMEG mixer was able to mix the bread dough we tested in it efficiently, and get it kneaded to point of being elastic. A minute or two of kneading the dough by hand after removing it from the machine, and the dough was perfectly developed.

The only downside our tester noticed was the sound the mixer makes. Given that it's got a more powerful motor, it makes sense that it would be louder; with great power comes greater noise, which is something to consider if that's something you're sensitive to. But even though the machine may get louder than the others, it doesn't show any signs of distress or overheating while mixing and kneading dough.

Price at time of publish: $540

Number of Speeds: 10 | Power: 800 watts | Bowl Volume: 4.8 liters (5 quarts) | Attachments: 1 beater, 1 dough hook, 1 wire whip

Best Heavy-Duty

KitchenAid Pro Line Series 7-Quart Bowl-Lift Stand Mixer

4.4

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Our Ratings

• Design
  4.5/5
• Performance
  4.5/5
• Size
  5/5
• Features
  4/5
• Value
  4/5

If your bread-baking habits are higher in volume, the high-performance KitchenAid Pro Line 7-quart Stand Mixer is an outstanding option. It’s a bigger, more powerful version of the trademarked KitchenAid design that can mix up to a whopping 8 pounds of dough at a time. With 10 speeds to choose from, this mixer excels at kneading heavier doughs thanks to its quiet yet powerful 1.3-horsepower motor, which gives it the capability to knead for longer without overheating.

While it's clear that the larger capacity of this machine can easily knead several batches of bread dough at a time, it is also able to mix single batches of bread dough efficiently. It performed impressively when our Lab tester put it to lighter-duty tasks like mixing cookie dough and whipping cream. And unlike the SMEG stand mixer, the KitchenAid Pro Line mixer didn't get any louder when mixing faster or thicker doughs. In fact, it hardly exhibited any signs of exertion, other than becoming ever-so-slightly warm after intense dough mixing for almost 15 minutes.

True to its name, the KitchenAid Pro Line 7-quart bowl-lift stand mixer is trusted in professional kitchens and bakeries everywhere. It's great for bread dough mixing, but it's also ideal for anyone who's serious about making pasta dough regularly, or even bakers who find themselves making larger cakes, batches of frosting, and cookie dough several batches at a time.

This mixer features 10 speeds, and its heavier weight—approximately 25 pounds—ensures that the machine won’t budge when it’s in use. The bowl-lift design utilizes a crank that locks the bowl into the raised position while the bowl itself snaps into place at three points for maximum stabilization. It includes a wire whip, paddle attachment, and a spiraled dough hook, which mimics hand-kneading. If you bake often, you’ll love how this mixer performs; it’s a true workhorse and lives up to everything you’d expect from a professional-grade mixer. 

Price at time of publish: $679

Number of Speeds: 10 | Power: 969 watts | Bowl Volume: 7 quarts | Attachments: 1 beater, 1 dough hook, 1 wire whip

Best for Small Spaces

KitchenAid Artisan Mini 3.5-Quart Tilt-Head Stand Mixer

4.4

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Our Ratings

• Design
  4.5/5
• Performance
  4/5
• Size
  3/5
• Features
  4.5/5
• Value
  4/5

If you’re looking for the capability of a full-sized machine but simply don’t have the room for one, look no further than the 3.5-quart version of the KitchenAid Artisan Stand Mixer. Armed with the same functionality and tilt-head feature as the full-size version, this 250-watt model is perfectly sized for mixing smaller quantities. Not to mention it comes in about a dozen colors to choose from.

We used the very same tests for this smaller KitchenAid that we did for the larger 5.5-quart Artisan model—whipping cream, mixing cookie dough, and kneading bread—and it performed just as well when working with single batches of each recipe. Even when mixing a single batch of bread dough, the machine didn't appear to be taxed in the least.

Our testers agreed that you'd be sacrificing a little in the way of bowl volume, but not compromising on performance (or style, for that matter). Given that you're getting the reliability of a KitchenAid mixer that could potentially last several decades with proper care, the price tag makes sense. It's not out of the question that you could be giving it to your kids when they get their first apartment—at which point, you can upgrade to a larger model.

Bonus: This model has the “Soft Start” feature that eliminates ingredient “splash-out” when turning the mixer on. The paddle attachment is also designed with a rubber edge that helps scrape the sides of the bowl clean while mixing.

Price at time of publish: $380

Number of Speeds: 10 | Power: 250 watts | Bowl Volume: 3.5 quarts | Attachments: 1 beater, 1 dough hook, 1 wire whip

Best Large Capacity

Wolf Gourmet WGSM100S High-Performance Stand Mixer

4.2

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Our Ratings

• Design
  4.5/5
• Performance
  5/5
• Size
  4/5
• Features
  4.5/5
• Value
  4/5

Though this stand mixer is fairly new to the game, the Wolf brand is known for superior quality and craftsmanship. This professional-grade machine features a 7-quart capacity bowl and a robust 500-watt motor that can handle 8 pounds of dough at a time. Like the KitchenAid Pro Line mixer, this model uses a bowl-lift, but Wolf’s proprietary design lifts and lowers the bowl from the base with an easy turn of the bowl’s handle. 

Bakers will enjoy the great control of mixing speed thanks to the variable speed dial and a pulse function for slowly adding ingredients into the mix. When our home tester mixed a batch of bread dough, they were impressed with the power and speed with which the mixer worked. The mixer gave no signs of distress, overheating, noise, or extreme shaking. Where other models may "walk" across countertops with extreme mixing, the Wolf Gourmet stood its ground.

In our Lab tests, we were impressed by how well the mixer handled a batch of bread dough. It was one of the few mixers that were able to completely knead a batch of dough without finishing it by hand after removing it from the machine. But given how large the bowl is, you may need to scrape down the bowl a few times while mixing to make sure everything mixes evenly and all ingredients are incorporated. Our tester also mentioned that this machine can easily handle two, if not three, batches of dough at a time.

The Wolf Gourmet High-Performance Stand Mixer also includes a flat beater, whisk, and dough hook that are all top-rack dishwasher-safe, making for hassle-free cleanup. The only downside is the cost of the machine, which may be prohibitive to some bakers. If you already own Wolf products, you’ll appreciate the professional styling of this mixer, as its red knob and brushed finish coordinates well with other industrially-inspired Wolf appliances.

Price at time of publish: $1,000

Number of Speeds: Variable and pulse | Power: 500 watts | Bowl Volume: 7 quarts | Attachments: 1 beater, 1 dough hook, 1 wire whip