The Bosch Dilemma

As you can tell, I am catching up on the posts that have been accumulating in my mind while I have been unable to post since Monday.

So here is today's dilemma. I went on a cooking spree today. Partly fueled by the desire to feed my children, partly by the desire to make some treats to send off with my dad & stepmother, and partly to distract myself from worrying about a dear friend who is in the hospital.

One of the things I made was a batch of bread in my Bosch Bread Mixer, which was a wedding gift from my parents 21.5 years ago. This mixer is a thing of wonder and makes incredible bread. For example--Ramona ate some today and was sure there was white flour in it, because it was so nice and light. But no, it was 100% whole wheat flour that I had just ground myself. (Yes, I am just like the Little Red Hen!)

Recently my mixer has developed a little quirk. For the last few months whenever I make a batch of bread some of the dough always gets into the shaft of the bowl (the middle part where it hooks into the machine) all the way down to the bottom of the bowl. If I don't get it out right away (if I let the bread rise in the bowl, for instance) it rises and oozes out through all of the little places. I could get a screwdriver and take the shaft assembly apart every time to clean it out, but that is such a pain. And so I end up running water through the middle for what seems like hours, washing the dough out a little bit of a time. Which is also a pain, now that I think of it. A long pain.

I decided last week that maybe the problem would be solved if I made a smaller batch of bread, so that the dough didn't go up as high in the bowl. And that worked last week, but not today. The smaller batch of dough brings a new problem, though. You can see it in the video below:



Just in case it isn't clear enough what the problem is, here is a picture I took of the mixer after it had been kneading the bread for a few minutes. The kneading process started in the middle of the island--and I had already rescued the mixer from almost falling off of the island once when I took this picture.


So here's my dilemma...do I make the regular sized batch of bread and just resign myself to having to clean out the shaft every time? Or do I make the smaller batch, hope that the dough stays where it belongs, but have to stay and babysit the mixer while it kneads because it's going to fall off the counter if I don't?!?

It's a good thing the actual making of the bread is so easy, because this part is driving me crazy!