Equipment Review: Famag Spiral Mixer

This post last updated: Jan 2020

PART II OF THIS REVIEW FOUND HERE

Disclaimer: Neither Pleasant Hill Grain nor Famag compensated me in any way for this review. This is a 100% unbiased review of the Famag Spiral Dough Mixer.

What is a spiral mixer?

Most everyone that has ever baked a loaf of bread is familiar with the standard KitchenAid mixer “KA”. So that it is clear, a KA mixer is also called a planetary mixer. “Planetary” because the hook rotates, but the rotating hook also rotates inside the bowl. This is much like how the moon rotates around the earth but the moon and earth together rotate around the sun.

A spiral mixer also has a rotating hook, except it stays in a fixed position along the side of the bowl (not in the middle). The bowl rotates while the hook is spinning. Most efficient spiral mixers also have something known as a “breaker bar”. This is literally a bar that sits inside the middle of the mixer bowl in a stationary position.

A breaker bar is important because it cuts and strecthes the dough as it passes off the spinning hook and back into the spinning bowl. Without a breaker bar, dough is mixed less efficiently and it also has a greater tendency to spin around the hook instead of passing through it.

Why get a spiral mixer?

I have made identical recipes with a KA and then in a spiral mixer. The development of gluten is stunningly more efficient and effective in a spiral mixer. Better gluten development means stronger dough. Stronger dough means more rise, better gas retention, better handling and better crumb structure. You would be very hard pressed to find a bakery doing a lot of breads that doesn’t have a spiral mixer with a breaker bar as one of their most important pieces of equipment.

Where can I get a spiral mixer?

Up until very recently (late 2018)(early 2020), there were simply no spiral mixers available for home use in the United States. Believe me, I searched far and wide! I finally settled on buying one from overseas and doing a complicated electrical conversion to make it work on USA electricity. Luckily, I never had to make that purchase, as you will read below.

Some will point out that there are USA-available spiral mixers. Ah, but they all have one very important thing missing from them: a breaker bar. The importance of a breaker bar cannot be overstated. The best example of a spiral mixer without a breaker bar is the Häussler line of mixers. Don’t get me wrong, these are extremely high-end and great quality mixers. But without that breaker bar…it’s a deal breaker for me personally (pun intended :)).

One day, I was browsing one of my favorite online baking supply stores (Pleasant Hill Grain) and was shocked to see they were now importing high quality spiral mixers WITH A BREAKER BAR from Italy! It had a USA-plug, USA-warranty and a reasonable USA-price ($1,400)($1,500), not to mention USA-customer service from Pleasant Hill Grain. Hooray!!

My wife thought I may be going a little crazy, but it made my whole week. I did some research on the different models and all were made by an Italian company called Famag. Honestly, I had been waiting for this opportunity for at least 5 years. I couldn’t press “purchase” fast enough on my screen. A week later, I got my big beautiful new Famag IM-10S Spiral Dough Mixer.

About the Famag

As of this writing, Pleasant Hill Grain offers 7 models ranging from the smaller end (8.4Qt) to larger (56Qt). The large models are by special order. Currently you can purchase the 8.4Qt, 11.5Qt and 13.7Qt models with nothing more than a few clicks of the mouse. The difference in cost between the models is surprisingly little, about $100 per incremental size increase. One of the big advantages of a spiral mixer is that it can handle very small dough quantities as efficiently as it can a full load. You can comfortably cut the maximum dough quantity down to 10% and it will still work great. For my 13.7Qt model, the maximum dough capacity is 26 lbs. That means I can process as little as two and half pounds without issues. So when it came time to decide on which model to buy, I chose the biggest one I could reasonably fit in my kitchen. For $100 more, I had a huge range of options for the quantities of dough I work with. Obviously, if you never make more than 2-3 loaves of bread at any given time, one of the smaller versions will suit you better.

Famag is an excellent brand, the machine is made in Italy and most everyone that has reviewed this machine agrees it is great. This review applies to at least the first three sizes Pleasant Hill Grain sells.

Unpacking

The machine comes in a pretty big box and the whole thing weighs about 90 lbs (yikes!). You really need two people to get it in the house. The machine actually resides in its own box which is inside the delivery box. Kudos to PHG for carefully packaging it all up, but they fill the second box with foam peanuts which are guaranteed to get all over your house. Surely there are better ways to protect it? Fortunately, one member of my family enjoyed all those peanuts…

Once out of the box, the machine is tightly wrapped in plastic. I carefully unwrapped it and basked in the glory of its beauty.

Aside from the machine itself, there is a mostly useless recipe book, an instruction manual which is also almost totally useless, and some other miscellaneous paperwork. As a result, I had to tinker with it a bit before I got it to work (see below).

Plugging it in, turning it on

Once unpacked, I started putting things together. Surprisingly, it wasn’t clear how to attach the bowl to the base. It turns out you have to rotate the bottom disc while the bowl is stationary so that it locks it down. I plugged everything in, held my breath and pushed the button to make it run….nothing. What? I looked everything over and pressed the ‘go’ button again….nothing. “Uh oh, this isn’t good.”, I said to myself. I kept checking and rechecking. Finally I pressed a little harder on the top half that houses the hook down and I felt a click. I then understood the top simply wasn’t down all the way and the safety feature prevented it from turning on.

Safety Features

As I learned, if the top part is not 100% completely seated, the machine will not start. After some more experimentation, I realized there is another sensor that prevents movement if the bowl is not in the machine. There is the obvious safety device that stops the machine if you lift the metal grate. All in all, I felt pretty sure I would not get tangled up in the moving parts regardless of how clumsy I was. And that turns out to be a really good thing, because the Famag is very, VERY powerful. Think WWII battle tank lovingly converted to a dough mixer.

The Famag is Strong and Quiet

Although there are (as of today) still some inconsistencies on the PHG website regarding the power/wattage of the mixer and other specifications, I actually don’t care. I have run very challenging low hydration dough in it (eg. Bagel dough) and I swear I could hear the Famag mocking me the whole time (although I didn’t fully understand since it was in Italian). Suffice it to say, I can’t imagine you would really cause any strain to the motor unless you decided to mix cement in it for your weekend projects. Also, it is incredibly quiet when running, even at full speed. Compared to a KitchenAid at full speed that requires the use of hearing protection, the Famag sounds like nothing louder than quiet conversation.

Does it handle dough like a real spiral mixer?

Yes, you bet! I have used large capacity professional spiral mixers and the Famag delivered identical results to those machines. Look at the gluten windows below I got with ease. My KitchenAid mixer could never ever achieve that kind of development. If you are serious about making bread, you will never be satisfied with a KA mixer once you try a spiral like the Famag. There is simply nothing better on the market right now for home bakers or micro-bakeries in the USA.

Weaknesses:

More weaknesses with this mixer are discussed in Part II of this review here.

OK, I’ve raved and raved about the Famag machine. Yes, I am a fan. Is it perfect? No. What disappointed me?

1. Reverse speed not useful

First, I was so happy to see the machine comes with a forward AND REVERSE speed. Hooray! Not even some professional spiral mixing machines have a reverse. But alas, my exuberance was dashed when I realized the button doesn’t just reverse the bowl as it should. It reverses the hook too :(. That’s a problem, because when the hook reverses, it pulls dough up the hook until it hits the ceiling of the machine, gets inside the mechanism, gets all over the sensors, cables and every nook and cranny imaginable. No, of course that never happened to me <sarcasm>.

Spiral mixers that have a true reverse actually have two motors. One for the hook and one for the bowl. When you put it in reverse, the hook keeps spinning clockwise, but the bowl reverses to go counter-clockwise. A reverse is helpful, because when you first add in all your flour and water, you sometimes need to reverse the bowl so all the dry pieces get picked up more easily. Without a reverse, you need to stop and scrape the sides every minute or so until everything gets picked up. The Famag has only one motor, so when the motor reverses, both the bowl and hook change directions together. Bottom line: no big deal, just disappointing.

2. Connection between the top and base is poorly thought out.

I already mentioned that sometimes the top and bottom halves don’t click together if the joining mechanism is not aligned properly – but that is really minor. The more annoying thing is how the top and bottom pieces are held together once you start mixing.

As you’ll see in the pictures, two screws with wings lock things together. You really need to tighten them as you mix or the dough will cause the top to push upwards. This would trigger the safety feature to stop the machine.

Unfortunately, the screw is really annoying, because you never know exactly how far to UNSCREW it to release the top from the base. I found myself many times unscrewing it too far and it fell out, or I didn’t screw it out enough and I kept struggling to pull the top up in vain. I think Famag could have done better here with a spring loaded pin that can be snapped into the hole to lock it down. When done, the user would pull the pin out and to the side. There may be other ways, but the current system is really poorly thought out.

3. The attachment mechanism of the bowl to the base creates noise.

Third, the bowl attachment to the base is not great. I really like that the bowl is removable, that is a big plus. But the bowl attaches to the base with four mushroom-like knobs that fit into 4 holes in the base.

When the base is rotated, a mechanism locks it in place. But there is some play in this attachment. In other words, once it’s locked in, you can jiggle the bowl a few millimeters in either direction. That becomes a problem when you start mixing dough. Every time the bowl makes a rotation, it pulls the bowl one way. On the second half of the rotation, the bowl gets pulled the opposite way and that’s when you hear a distinctive, “click…pop”.

Now imagine the bowl rotates 30 times a minutes, and instead of having a perfectly quiet mixing experience, you hear, “Click…..pop…..click….pop.”. Famag could have made the connection tighter and avoided this by simply placing some rubber O-Rings around the mushroom attachments – any play in the locking mechanism would be absorbed.

4. The variable speed knob is just asking for trouble and it’s not necessary.

Lastly, I really like that the machine has more than 1-speed. Bread is best mixed on a low speed for the first 4-5 minutes so the gluten has time to absorb water and the dough comes together. Then it’s good to flip to a high speed to actually develop the gluten. I have no need for all the speeds in between. All professional spiral mixers, even the ones that cost $40,000, have only two speeds. The Famag has a knob that gives you infinitely variable speeds and I found it totally unnecessary. It’s just another one of those parts with a higher chance of failure. Plus, every time I want to go from slow to fast, I have to rotate a dial all the way around. All they needed here was a “speed 1” and “speed 2” button, and it would have been perfect.

Summary

PROS:

1. Very quiet (except for the click/pop from the bowl).
2. Very powerful.
3. Well-built, attention to details and parts appear to be high quality
4. 110V, 60Hz – Yes, this is a big deal. Good luck finding a spiral mixer with breaker bar in the USA (other than this one).
5. Removable bowl and the top half lifts up for direct access to dough.
6. A slow and fast speed (and everything in between).
7. Plenty of safety features.
8. Made in Italy.
9. Has a breaker bar!! Yaaay!
10. 3 year warranty.

CONS (see more updates here):

1. Somewhat expensive (but that’s all relative).
2. A one-trick pony. Spiral mixers can only process dough and nothing else. But this is not a knock on the Famag specifically, just an FYI.
3. Click and pop heard from bowl attachment to base.
4. Poorly designed screw connector to hold top half to base.
5. Finicky connection between the top and bottom. This can prevent the top half from fully locking into the base (jiggling required).
6. Useless reverse speed.
7. Useless variable speeds, all that was needed was fast and slow.

CONCLUSION

The Famag line of mixers is outstanding. Sure, I was nit-picky about a couple of things, but they are all really minor. The most important thing is that the machine is very well built, it’s quiet, it’s powerful and it’s a genuine spiral mixer with a breaker bar. If you are in the market for a dedicated bread dough mixer, nothing else compares to the Famag. The Ankarsrum (which I tried, hated and returned), Bosch Universal, Häussler, etc….none of them hold a candle to a true spiral mixer. And, there is nowhere I am aware of you can buy one except at Pleasant Hill Grain. Kudos to PHG for seeing how unique and important this product is in the USA, and I thank them every time I use it.

Bottom line:

5 STARS – Strongly recommended!