Ankarsrum Assistent Original – Forest Green

I make all our bread – yeast and, more often, sourdough based – including artisan and tin styles, pizza, focaccia etc etc. I also regularly make both biscuits and cakes.

When my old faithful mixer (no longer in production) was coming towards the end of its life, I spent weeks researching new alternatives – I read reviews, watched videos, asked questions in all the cooking and baking forums. Finally I decided to take my courage in both hands and ordered the Ankarsrum.

What a brilliant decision. I’ve had it for 3 months now and it’s fabulous for bread. I have dodgy hands these days so the stretch and folds of sourdough baking had become less meditative pleasure than simply painful…but the Ank fixed the problem completely – I mix, autolyse, add my starter mix & thoroughly knead add a touch of olive oil and coat the doughball to ensure it won’t stick, then pop the bowl with its cover onto my warmpad for 3 to 4 hours of uninterrupted bulk fermentation. Then all the normal shaping and proving stages… I’m producing fabulous SD loaves of all types from this mechanised process – various flours, inclusions, no issues at all. Add an egg, swap water for yogurt, maybe some molasses or honey, no issues. Add raisins plumped overnight in brandy at the end of the knead? No sign of “chopping”, easy inclusion.

This is a fabulous machine for bread making – I wish I’d bought one sooner.

Works well for biscuits and cakes too. I’ve found no use for the beaters and small bowl so far. The roller/knife combo seem to do everything very satisfactorily.

It’s a very different approach to conventional mixers, but it’s pretty simple to make the mental switch – it’s worth watching a couple of the available YouTube videos, but what’s 30 minutes of your life. After that, plain sailing.

All in all, I’m very happy with my choice.