Thanks so much for your question! Ultimately the answer is that King Arthur is proud to offer professional level ingredients, recipes, and tools to the home baker. While KitchenAids are great machines (we use them in our Baking Schools), the Ankarsrum is designed in the style of a professional spiral mixer, which gives serious bakers certain advantages. KitchenAid makes "orbital mixers" meaning the chosen attachment is fixed to the head of the mixer, which is rotated around inside the bowl to mix, knead or whip your ingredients. The Ankarsrum's design allows the bowl to rotate around a fixed attachment, which allows dough to develop gluten more efficiently with less tearing. This mixer is also more applicable for a wide range of projects- you can knead up to 11 pounds of dough (6-7 standard loaves), but also whip as little as one egg white. Orbital mixers simply do not have that range. Additionally, there are some physical aspects we love about this machine for home bakers: it weighs only 19 pounds, whereas stand mixers are usually around 30 pounds, it is very quiet while running, and Ankarsrum offers superb customer support. Happy baking!

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