horizontal or spiral mixer

Horizontal or Spiral Mixer: What’s the Best Choice?

Should you invest in a spiral mixer? Or is a horizontal mixer a more economical choice?

When you’re looking at your dough mixing machine options, it can be difficult to know which is better at first glance. Whether you’re running a commercial bakery or opening a pizza restaurant, research both options carefully before deciding.

The Horizontal Mixer Delivers on Volume and Speed

How much dough do need to produce on a daily basis? A horizontal mixer gives you a clear advantage when you’re trying to mix thousands of pounds of dough. Medium-to-large-sized bakeries and factories depend on this type of machine because of its sheer size and capability.

Horizontal mixers come with a selection of mixing arms that allow you to customize based on the type of dough you are mixing. They also allow for continuous mixing, meaning once the mixed dough comes out, exiting easily into a trough, the next batch can go into the machine on the other end.

When you need to mix a large volume of dough quickly, choose a horizontal mixer.

The disadvantage to this choice is that heat generation is a concern. The friction from the dough rubbing on the sides of the mixing chamber causes the dough temperature to rise, which can be damaging to some types of dough.

The Spiral Mixer Provides Premium Flexibility

A spiral mixer works differently. The spiral-shaped blade remains stationary and mixes the dough in a rotating bowl that moves it in and out of the blade. It mixes dough more efficiently and also more gently than a horizontal mixer, so heat from friction isn’t as critical of a concern. These characteristics allow bakeries to produce a range of different products with consistent quality.

Because a spiral mixer uses an energy-efficient mixing process, the cost to run it is typically lower than that of a horizontal mixer. It’s also usually a less expensive piece of equipment.

The only downside to a spiral mixer is that it may not be able to mix quite as much dough at once as a horizontal mixer. Still, spiral mixer capacity is large, with the ability to produce hundreds of pounds of dough at one time.

What’s Right for Your Bakery?

If your goal is to produce a large quantity of one type of dough, a horizontal machine is better. If you want to create a range of products with the flexibility to create many different types of dough, a spiral mixer is the better investment.

No matter which option is right for you, Stratton Sales has options for you, with a range of bakery products to fit your schematic and your budget. Find either the horizontal or spiral mixer that will be an asset to your business for years to come — shop our catalog today.