An Honest Review of Ooni’s Halo Pro Spiral Stand Mixer

While the KitchenAid is far and away the most popular stand mixer in American home kitchens, most people who bake bread or pizza frequently know it is not always the best at kneading dough. KitchenAid mixers are planetary mixers, which mean that they basically just rotate around a single fixed point, and even with the dough hook, aren’t very good at forming gluten. As such, many home bakers covet standing spiral mixers, which are better at producing strong, beautifully silky doughs.

The problem, though, is that most standing spiral mixers are huge — and expensive. Among the bread enthusiasts on nerdy hubs like r/Breadit, the Italian-made Famag is wildly popular — but only for those who have upwards of $1,500 to spend on a mixer that’s pretty explicitly limited to producing bread doughs.

Enter Ooni, the company behind those inescapable home pizza ovens that fermentation bros across the country are using to produce perfectly charred Neapolitan-style crusts, and its latest offering, the Halo Pro Spiral Mixer.

In its advertising copy, Ooni takes thinly veiled jabs at KitchenAid. “The mixing experience we got from using other domestic stand mixers left us frustrated,” it reads. “The dough simply wouldn’t mix properly. It got clumpy and stuck to the dough hook.” And honestly, they’re right. When my KitchenAid has to handle much more than a single pizza’s worth of dough or a batch of cookies, it really struggles. After four or five minutes of mixing dough on medium, it starts to overheat and precariously jump around on the counter, and I regularly have to spend at least a few minutes kneading my dough by hand to ensure that it’s strong enough. The Halo Pro hopes to solve those problems, promising “artisanal-bakery-level” results, albeit at a price point around $800. That’s about double the cost of a brand-new KitchenAid, and only about half of what it costs to score a professional spiral mixer. But does it actually succeed?

Ooni sent us a Halo Pro to test, and here’s what we thought after a couple of bakes.

First impressions

Immediately upon taking it out of the box, it was clear that this machine is a countertop stunner. It may not have the vintage appeal of my baby-pink KitchenAid, which I’ve owned since I was in my early 20s, but it is both sleek and modern. It’s also surprisingly compact considering that the bowl is a whopping 7.8 quarts compared to my KitchenAid’s 4.5-quart capacity, and doesn’t take up much more room on the counter (although it does make my dinky apartment kitchen look at least a little bit more professional). It is controlled almost entirely with a large knob on top, which you can use to adjust the speed of the mixer or set a timer to ensure that your dough isn’t overworked.

In addition to the spiral hook, the Ooni also includes a paddle attachment for beating cake batter and cookie dough, along with a whisk for whipping buttercream frosting or fluffy whipped cream. I haven’t used the attachments yet, but they look very similar to the ones that come with a KitchenAid mixer, though the paddle attachment’s sides are lined with silicone to help scrape errant bits of batter back into the mix, which does feel like an upgrade. The Ooni’s attachments are heavier and feel more durable than the KitchenAid’s, though time will tell whether or not they’re — or the machine — is as sturdy. My KitchenAid has survived 13 years of abuse with massive loads of dough, and even though it’s not great for making bread, the Ooni still has huge shoes to fill.

How I tested it

Once I’d removed the mixer and its many accessories from the packaging and given them a wash, I immediately set out to make a batch of these Serious Eats hoagie rolls, one of my favorite single-day bakes. I plopped all the ingredients in the drum, cranked it up to 25 percent, and wandered off to go stare at my phone while the mixer did the work. When I returned, the dough looked nothing like what I was expecting. When mixed in my KitchenAid, it tended to clump up around the dough hook, forming a tight, clumpy ball. This dough was different, a bit more slack and resembling the “pumpkin” shape that many bakers describe as ideal in determining gluten development. As I removed the dough from the mixer for a quick final knead, it was silky in my hands and quickly passed the windowpane test.

Amy McCarthy

I did not, however, account for the increased temperature that the spiral mixer’s vigorous mixing would bring. In the KitchenAid, there’s usually not enough friction for a significant temperature increase, but that was not the case with the Ooni. My dough was quite warm, which meant that it was going to ferment more quickly than I expected. I stuck it in the fridge to help slow down the fermentation process, but it still ballooned within an hour. I quickly shaped my rolls, then waited for them to proof one final time before sticking them in the oven. After their bake, it was immediately clear that the rolls were slightly over-fermented, which meant that they were slightly pale and a bit dense toward the bottom. This was a direct result of my temperature issue, which happened because I didn’t account for the increased heat generated during the mixing process. That said, the mixer provided enough gluten structure that my rolls still rose reasonably well.

Knowing that the issues with this batch were likely my fault, I set out to make the same batch of dough again, but this time, I used chilled water. That worked like a charm, and my dough emerged from an eight-minute mix at room temperature. It rose beautifully, shaped easily, and baked beautifully. The rolls were both airy and sturdy, making them perfect for holding tons of hoagie toppings. These are always pretty solid hoagie rolls, but after a spin in the Ooni, they were decidedly — if only slightly — better.

Amy McCarthy

After the hoagie experiment, I put the Ooni to the test with the basic sourdough loaf that I make about once a week. Instead of mixing the dough by hand, I let the machine do the work, mixing the dough at varying speeds until it passed the windowpane test, which many bakers use to determine if their dough has developed enough gluten. After a few hours of bulk fermenting on the counter and an overnight cold proof, the resulting loaf had a lofty rise and a very open crumb.

Amy McCarthy

And perhaps most importantly, I didn’t have to spend upwards of 10 minutes getting flour goop all over my increasingly tired hands while strengthening the dough.

Do I really need the Ooni stand mixer?

If you regularly make yeasted or sourdough bread, pizza crust, or bagels at home, it’s definitely worth considering the Halo Pro over a KitchenAid. This one is for those who are truly serious about bread-baking and mixing hefiter and more complex doughs — and it does so with ease and panache.

More casual bakers — the type who only bake a batch or two of cookies every few months — will likely find its hulking size and bread-specific attachments overkill. In fact, if a sheet cake or a couple dozen cookies is what you bake most, it’s probably not the best choice for you at all. The machine isn’t designed to work with smaller batches of dough, which means that when you’re creaming together the butter and sugar for your chocolate chip cookies, the Ooni’s massive size means that it just can’t mix those two ingredients together as efficiently as my KitchenAid.

It would also be nice if the Ooni came with more recipes or methods for which speeds to use and for how long. If you’re used to developing your dough, this will likely come intuitively, but if you’re not, it will likely seem overwhelming and confusing at first. Considering the wealth of content Ooni has created around its pizza ovens, it’s likely that those recipes will come, but for now, you’re kind of stuck relying on the early-adopter bloggers to come up with optimized methods and tips and tricks.

Pros

• Looks great on the counter and doesn’t take up too much space
• Very stable and well-made, doesn’t jump around all over the counter when kneading dough
• The attachments are very sturdy and — bonus — dishwasher-safe
• Pretty quiet, even when handling very large batches of dough
• Does a great job of strengthening bread and pizza dough

Cons

• Not great for small batch baking
• Slightly bigger than a KitchenAid

The verdict

If you’re the type of person who spends hours fiddling with hydration percentages, biga recipes, and stone-milled flours, Ooni’s stand mixer could be an excellent addition to your baking arsenal. That said, I don’t think this is a gadget for the novice bread baker. If you’re not familiar with what your dough should look like when it’s fully strengthened, it’s easy to over- or under-mix with any mixer, and the Ooni is no exception. But for sourdough freaks, this mixer will impress.

The Ooni Halo Pro mixer is available at Ooni and Williams Sonoma.