by C. Devlin » Mon Mar 12, 2007 12:33 am
Well now you've done it, Blake. You've made me blush.
The mixer was a concession I struggled with because until that point everything was entirely hand-crafted. Easy in small batches. Hell for bigger batches. Especially, maybe, for small people like me. I'd like to say my upper body strength isn't what it used to be, but it wasn't ever anything to write home about in the first place. So I use the mixer sparingly, and briefly, very briefly, but it's especially crucial now that I have increasingly larger batches to bake. At the same time, I continue to add a lot of the ingredients by hand after the intial mix because to me it makes a difference. My husband (my biggest critic next to me) says he can't really tell, but I can.
I went looking for a 20 qt. mixer only to be told by several used equipment dealers in town that they rarely have anything in that range anymore. And then a friend mentioned this guy who lives out in the boonies just a mile or so from us. And golly. It's sort of mind boggling. Yeah, nobody has anything because this guy has every used piece of restaurant equipment in the midwest sitting in his barns. I was impressed even before he showed us his massive walk-in freezer outfitted for his 20-some cats. We looked at a bunch of 20 qt mixers but they all looked too small, and so I kept hemming and hawing. And then he said, "Ya know, I just got this really old 30 quart Hobart you might like," and yeah, I did. Nothing fancy. But I fell in love on the spot.
Before we refurbished her, I called her Isabella Rossellini because she was beautiful even without the paint. She makes me happy every time I see her.