mixing it up

Those of y'all who know me well know that I love to cook, and also have a weakness for gadgets -- not just the newest or shiniest gadgets, but the gadgets of quality most useful for things that are hardest (at least for people like me) to do without them.

I have ONE chef's knife, but I think I treat it a bit like a Marine treats a rifle; it goes where I go, it cuts anything that needs cutting, and I care for it a bit more conscientiously than I do my skin. Masaharu Morimotu is my kind of guy when it comes to the honor and care due to the tools of culinary arts; the way I feel about the One Good Tool that I have in each cooking category in which I have one is probably about as close as I'll ever come to knowing what a samuri felt about his sword (y'all tell me if that's wildly inappropriate culturally; I'm grasping here).

And I have long coveted a really, really good standing mixer. One that will kneed 100% whole wheat bread dough as I did when I was a more hale and ambitious baker. One that (with the proper attachment) will grind the lamb I buy so cheaply at Costco if I want to experiment with burgers and meatloaves including such a meat (which I know a decent butcher would grind for me, but you might not know just how huge the difference in price is between lamb you buy at a good butcher's and lamb of equally good quality at Costco). One mixer to rule them all, one mixer to bind them ...

Well, maybe not quite that magical a mixer, but you get the idea.

Costco today had a deal that looked pretty irresistible on a mixer that looked as though it might suit my purposes. It's a KitchenAid Pro series -- 475-watt motor -- just like the mixer I've been dreaming about for years (yeah, I dream about kitchen appliances -- what can I say?), though I'd thought that to get the motor I wanted (mmm ... 475 watts ...) I'd need a six-quart capacity. This one has a five-quart capacity -- still enough to make six loaves of bread in a batch, the box says (and the wattage supports).

And the mixer, which I'd walked by at Costco for a year, was $40 off -- down to $239.99. The six-quart, 475-watt mixer I'd been eyeing for the last several years at least is way more than twice that much.

Cooking mavens, tell me: Am I a mixing fool? Will the five-quart capacity that seems perfectly fine to me, given the power of the motor (without which true whole-wheat dough, as well as many pasta doughs are impossible), chafe within weeks? Are attachments harder to get than they seem for this odd creature, the 475-watt but five-quarter? 'Cause I think this mixer just might be The One.