Bread again again again: a machine, or not

In these corona troubled times we (I) also starting baking bread, as you know. Yes you do. Last time I bored you with no-knead bread , but it turns out that we like regular rolls better than a loaf you need to cut. 2kg flour for 20 rolls (we bought 5 packs of 5kg at Mercadona) :

2kg flour and 1080 ml water is quite some dough, and the poor handmixer I use for the initial mix can barely handle it. It starts creaking and groaning very quickly,  so engineer Jansen's hands need to finish the work. Then it needs proper kneading. You should knead for 15 minutes, twice, but that is asking quite a lot of the kneader. So, the engineer starts creaking and groaning, too. 

Kitchenaid

Being an engineer a machine popped up in the brain quite quickly. After some searching around the internets concensus is that a Kitchenaid 6.9 liter Artisan with its powerful DC motor and planetary movement is the machine for making bread.

Who am I to disagree, with this "liebesapfelrot" beauty?

And no, it is not cheap, but they say it lasts forever, completely made of metal, unlike my poor plastic handmixer.

Ordered it online, there are no shops with this here. €750. Hm, yeah. Well.

There are two versions, technically identical, but different warranty conditions: 5KSM7580 and 5KSM7591. The 7580 series has a warranty of 5 years, and is intended for domestic use, the 7591 series is for professional use, and has a warranty of 1 year. Ordered the 5KSM7580XECA.

It arrived. On the serial number plate it says "ASSEMBLED IN USA", which was sort of a relief to engineer Jansen: at least not assembled in China.

Actually it is a very dangerous machine! Look:

And operation is both complicated and dangerous. Every time you want to add ingredients you need to switch off the "multi-fuction kitchen robot" completely, remove the plug from the socket, ...

Anyway, the engineer managed to get it unpacked and connected. First 1 kg flour. Oh, that's quite a lot actually, will it fit..? But after adding the water it shrinks and fits. Add another kilo and water. 

Click!

Hm, what is all that noise?

Click click! clicketeclick! Click! Click! This is not really to engineer Jansen's liking. It's not the connection of the dough hook to the axle, it really is some play in the gears of the machine:

Engineer Jansen rreally does not like that, clicking and thumping means that gears bump into each other, which means: wear and tear. And maybe there is 5 year warranty, but I don't want to have to repair a machine after 5 years either.

There are a lot of web pages about the clicking noise. Many machines do have the sound, but many are totally quiet! Some people think it is the connection between dough hook and the axle (it's not):

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/50550/does-your-kitchenaid-proline-7-qt-mixer-click-under-heavy-loads

They exchanged the machine there, and got one that does not click.

This machine is quiet:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFMXtuUtM3w&feature=share

 

Asked Kitchenaid online, via Facebook, and got this reply: 

"The clicking sound is not normal and we advised you to exchange it indeed. 

As for the movement of the planetary part, it's completely normal and it has no effect on the appliance's performance whatsoever, nor will it affect it in the future. The only issue with your machine is the clicking sound for which we confirmed is not normal."

Back to the shop. 

"The machine we have here in the showroom makes the same noise, so it is normal"

But, if I insisted they would be willing to exchange it for another machine. Tried another round of dough making, but the noise did not go away, so what to do. If this is a serial fault, exchanging it for another machine will not help. It may be better to send it off to Kitchenaid and have it repaired, so I'd be certain I'll have a machine that I like. 

Asked that Kitchenaid. Also, if they are so sure a certain clicking is normal, would they be willing to extend the warranty for that specific problem beyond 5 years? Alas, the online Kitchenaid people have no authority in Spain, so I needed to call Kitchenaid service in Barcelona and discuss. Grmbl.

I don't feel like sending a brand new machine off for repairs that I don't know the outcome of.

And, the shop now said: a new machine will make the same noise, so we will not exchange it. But, you can send it back and get a refund. So I did that. 

Packing up this machine is not simple, and I had not done an unboxing video, but we managed.

The machine was picked up, after reminding them only twice, and a refund was promised. 

It took a few times reminding them of that too, but eventually we had the money back. Pfew.

And, maybe the Kitchenaid is not assembled in China, but the parts used may be from there. Where is your quality control, Kitchenaid? Someone mentioned the professional 79 series (only 1 year warranty vs 5 years) never has this clicking, so it is/seems possible to produce a trouble-free machine.  However, as a single customer I cannot find that out.

But, now being machineless it's back to the kneading board. 

Bosch

A friend suggested this Bosch:

Bleah. I like Bosch, but this is silly. And it's a huge machine.

Planetenruhrmaschine

Or this one for €350? A lot cheaper than the Kitchenaid! And it looks like it can mix planets, indeed.

 https://www.ggmgastro.com/gb/planetenruehrmaschine-10-liter.html

Ankarsrum 

The Swedish Ankarsrum? (€550) For extensions you turn the machine on its side!

https://www.ankarsrumoriginalusa.com

hm.

Canales: Dutch people do waterworks

When it rains here it pours, as you obviously will have read in the past, *here*. Yes you have.

The Dyke

Much of the trouble is due to a barranco that should drain away rainwater from the hills, via a terraced campo behind us. Gaps in the walls surrounding those campos drain the water to the next terrace. However, the upper campo has a collapsed wall, so quite a lot of water drains onto the road there, eventually ending up at our entrance. 

We asked the nephew of the owner to close the gap, as he’s into the business of moving earth with digging machines. He said "it's my uncle’s land!". We knew that, and he’s living in Barcelona (really).

We asked him to move some earth against the gap if he had a machine here. He said yes, but nothing happened, even when his diggers were here and I asked again. 

Also, officially, asked the ayuntamiento to do something about it. No reply. Nada. 

Okay, be that way. So, we put up a dyke:

3 Drains

Next step: we made 3 drains across the road, draining water away to the side. Many roads here have concrete channels across the road with a metal grid, to get rid of water:

Drain 1 of 3

We made drain nr. 1 at the entrance of the property, draining away into the canal we had dug:

Spot the nice reflectors? In Spain the right side has orange reflectors, white on the left. NL has red reflectors right.

Drain 2 of 3

In the middle of our bypass canal number two:

Drain 3 of 3

And finally canal nr. 3:

Channel and overflow

And, finally, deepen the existing draining channel in our land to the overflow opening in our lowest wall:

The rains may come!

hm, careful what you wish for now.

Cave: a mystery! Do we have a ghost?

 As you can see we seem to have a ghost in our cellar, and he’s not happy.

Engineer Jansen discovered this by fingering some loose stones, and even taking one out, worried about the state of the wall. To his surprise there was nothing behind the removed stone. More stones were loose, and quickly removed:

It could be the long lost tunnel to Kirrin Island! 

But no, it is not a tunnel. Our cellar has a black hole in it! 

The black is soot, as we soon found out, having it on hands and clothes. 

Soot? From fire? 

Did they have a fire in the cellar? 

Is there a chimney? (No, I think, at least not any more.) 

What on earth do you use a fire in a cellar for? Asked the question in the facebook forum for Spanish Molinos, ACEM - Asociación para la Conservación y Estudio de los Molinos but so far no answer.

As far as I know this cellar was not for storage, but there were parts of the machinery here. Cogs and belts and wheels. Maybe they needed a bit of fire for softening grease for the bearings?

The left gap could well have been the storage space for firewood or even coal:

Perhaps we will never know. 

We decided to not plaster over any weird holes in the cellar (...) and keep them accessible for posterity. The black hole will have a sheet of plexiglass or something.

Cave, but now properly

We wanted to use the cellar under the kitchen for storage of canned and bottled food stuff, and clean up the kitchen. The cellar is about 30 m², which is a quite useful space:

In cellar posts I have written down some experiences with our cellar, and how it was humid, and is now a lot better by removing the old plaster and installing a ventilator. But, it's still not good enough for food storage. Or in fact any storage. The humidity now is reasonable, but the walls and ceiling kept dropping dust and bits of old plaster, covering everything with a nasty dust layer. And, the floor was not a proper tiled floor, but a very old-fashioned compacted earth floor.

What to do. Engineer Jansen learned from Le Bricoleur (Christian von Klösterlein) that you better not simply tile a floor like that, or humidity will rise up in the walls and make things even worse. His solutions always are for ground level floors, and thus he digs in drains and applies external wall cladding to keep moisture out. As this is a cellar we cannot apply external cladding or drains, unless we dig a huge trench. 

We decided that the walls need plastering with the very breathing Kerakoll Muroseco plaster that we already used in the kitchen and cave room with great success: those walls are now properly dry, which is a huge improvement for the atmosphere in the house. A humid house you cannot heat in winter: every bit of warmth is sucked up by the wet walls, and gone. 

But what to do about the floor? Engineer Jansen thought it would be a good idea to build a floor with a ventilatable space underneath:

On top of those beams  ceramic tiles are put, then a layer of concrete, then tiles. And, a proper expansion joint all around the floor: a modern concrete slab in a classic building can be a danger to the house, even though the temperature in the cellar is pretty constant. 

As you can see in the picture above they left gaps between the end of the beams, and underneath the beams too. That was not what was requested, we wanted separate channels, so those gaps are filled with a blob of cement. 

And lo!

At both ends of the cellar there are plastic gutters:

The idea is that the extractor fan at the end of the cellar expels the air down into the second cellar, thus creating a gentle airflow over these grates, hopefully ventilating the floor below enough to not make damp rise up into the walls.

We ordered 8 metal Ikea racks 160x80 cm for storage. Stay tuned! Oh, just heard that it will take 4 weeks to get them delivered, due to the corona crisis. Always something.