Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This equipment is so much less than advertised. Buyer beware! I've never owned a stand mixer before and was really excited to get one. For its first time out, I decide to make a dinner roll dough I've made about 20 times before. Here's what happened: - I tried adjusting bowl according to the instruction booklet. But I reached the limit of the adjustment screw (won't turn any more) and there was still clearance of beater / dough hook to bowl. So, I thought, well maybe that's as far as it goes. - I had to continually scrape down the sides of the bowl because the hook, at the "2" setting, wasn't powerful enough to pull dry flour off the sides of the bowl. - After the first or second scrape, my scraper started getting disgusting black streaks on it. That creeped me out, so I started washing my scraper every time I scraped rather than folding the black crud back into my dough. - My dough refused to come together after 2 minutes (the recommended amount of time). I let it keep going for 4 min. 6 min. 8 min. No windowpane. So I gave up and tipped it out to knead by hand. And what came out of the bottom of the bowl but a big clump of raw flour that hadn't been mixed in. I don't know, it seems to me that the point of a mixer is to mix things. I have a $50 bread machine that mixes dough successfully without me having to hover over it to get incorporation of ingredients and gluten development. I asked for the Kitchenaid as a gift, to upgrade on what I have. So not only is this mixer terrible at doing its basic function, now it's ruined Christmas. I'm giving it one more shot next week on a more basic recipe but most likely I'll be returning it. Ugh. UPDATE: I decided to divide my dough in halves (~2lb each) and threw them in my old bread machine's dough setting (the Oster Expressbake, $59.99 on AmazonOster 2-Pound Expressbake Bread Machine with 13-Hour Delay Timer, CKSTBRTW20). Had nice, smooth balls of dough in ~20min per half. Considering how much time this Kitchenaid mixer wasted me today, I went ahead and returned it, no second chances!