Discussion
I love kitchen gadgets. Back in 2012 I bought a sous vide from Anova and it was the most expensive high tech kitchen gadget I'd ever bought (and it had wifi for some reason) but I still use it all the time and today it seemed like it was maybe broken after 14 years.
"Good enough" I thought. And wondered what new souse vide tech the world had moved on to.
You can still buy the same exact model. Nothing has changed.
oh. and then it came back to life.
So. If you'd use a sous vide? It's a good one. I'm so happy it's not really dead.
Maybe it was the poor wifi that make it go into a coma.
But, a lot of tech feels like this. Frozen in time, you know?
Am I just getting old?
Although, the kitchen aid mixer hasn't changed for 60 years.
I got one as a wedding present. Used it exactly once and then sold it to a neighbor. (Please forgive me uncle chuck. I was not meant to use a "bread hook" that is for a serial killer I think)
I wonder if there have been improvements that you can’t easily advertise.
When I was a PhD student, the computational fluid dynamics group did some work for a biscuit company. They had a problem that their mixing process ended up with some ingredients in the mixer for weeks, which meant they had to routinely clean and sterilise them, which interrupted production. The outcome of the process was a design of a mixing hook that guarantees continuous flow. Ingredients could be added and dough extracted at a constant rate with no places where you’d get little eddies that would collect the mixed dough.
I can imagine the dough hook isn’t the perfect shape for mixing and kneading dough. I haven’t had one of these machines for a long time, but I remember it always had the problem that you’d start it mixing bread and it would shower the room with flour for a bit. Something that would dynamically adjust the speed and a hook shaped to direct the flour down (with the bowl shaped so that down doesn’t reflect to up) is easy to design with modern CFD techniques, but it would be hard to sell.
@david_chisnall @futurebird they aren't that sophisticated. That's why recipe instructions say stop to scrape down the bowl several times and there's always a glob of whatever at the bottom that has hardly mixed.
I'd say maybe the industrial equipment would be better but you already provided an example to the contrary.
@futurebird we also got a KitchenAid as a wedding gift - 29 years ago. Still works great! I don't know how they make money if their appliances never break. Maybe it's all the wedding registries???
@johnmark @futurebird they do require maintenance / repair if you put heavy loads on them frequently, so I expect a big part of their market are small batch professional bakers who will fully wear them down over a few years.
Install bonfire.cafe
Get the full app experience
