Ooni Halo Pro Spiral Mixer Review

Introduction

It’s been more than a decade since Ooni created its first pizza oven. Having finessed the baking side of things, it was time to solve the stubborn problem of making dough. The Ooni Halo Pro Spiral Mixer is designed to do just that.

As a spiral mixer, it handles dough more gently than a stand mixer; kneading more uniformly and developing gluten efficiently with less friction – essentially, replicating hand-kneading. And while some stand mixers can struggle with stiffer or heavier mixtures, the Ooni Halo Pro Spiral Mixer is a serious workhorse with a toolkit to match – ideal for producing enough dough for your next pizza party or tackling big batches of chunky cookies.  

Design and features

• 60-minute timer
• 7L stainless-steel bowl
• 58 speeds

Mixers are often heavy but, at 14.6kg, you definitely won’t want to move the Ooni Halo Pro Spiral Mixer around your kitchen much. Fortunately, it’s attractive enough to leave out on the worktop with a die-cast aluminium body in white or grey and a sleek glass top panel with touchscreen controls wrapping around a 7L stainless-steel bowl.

There’s a trio of heavy-duty-looking tools that work with the DC motor at up to 58 speeds that are controlled by a single dial: a stainless-steel beater with silicone edges, a stainless-steel whisk with its own plastic gearbox, and the star of the show, a stainless-steel hook (weighing a hefty 565g). This pairs with a breaker bar that ‘breaks’ chunks of dough, regulating how much reaches the hook for kneading.

While at first glance the Halo Pro looks like a typical stand mixer, as a spiral mixer it works differently. Rather than combining a fixed bowl with a tool that utilises planetary mixing, here the bowl rotates as the tool rotates but stays in place rather than moving around the bowl. Some of the tools also differ. Its beater slots in and twists into place like a stand mixer, but the other two and the breaker screw into place, giving them stability. The removable breaker bar is worth noting: in traditional spiral mixers, breakers are fixed, limiting the mixing potential for other functions.

The bowl itself is different too: its flat base and wide diameter creates enough capacity for up to 5kg of dough (around 20 pizzas or six loaves of bread) or mixture, while with the whisk it can handle up to 2l of liquid.

Above, there’s a pair of lights so you can keep an eye on progress, while the controls on top of the mixer allow you to switch between speeds in percentage or RPM.

There’s also a 60-minute timer that counts down even when the mixer isn’t in motion, and a splashguard with a hole for adding liquid, or it can be flipped up for other ingredients. Plus, all the removable parts are dishwasher safe, except for the whisk’s gearbox.

Performance

• Mixed consistent dough
• Whisked stiff eggs whites
• Creaming and batter disappointing

The first thing I noticed about the Ooni Halo Pro Spiral Mixer is that it would have been useful to have measurement markings on the bowl. This is because there are minimum amounts it’s designed to mix, as well as maximums. For example, the minimum amount for liquids is 300ml, yet my first test was whisking eggs whites, meaning that I had to measure them out before starting.

I started whisking the egg whites on a low speed but noticed that they tended to splash up the sides of the bowl, so opted for the top speed quickly.

There wasn’t any guidance in the instructions as to what speed was best to use for different recipes, so prior experience of stand mixers would be a benefit.

After reaching 100% (345RPM) – which was much quieter than most stand mixers – I set the timer for 5 minutes. After the time had elapsed, the mixer stopped automatically and sounded an alert, which would be handy for busy bakers. The egg whites were firm and remained at the bottom of the bowl when it was inverted. 

While I thought it was useful that the whisk detached from the gearbox for cleaning, I found it awkward to unscrew this tool and others from the mixer if my hands were not completely dry.

Next, I made sponge cake batter, with the first task creaming together 175g each softened butter and sugar using the beater.

Here, the size of the mixer worked against it: butter tend to cling to the beater because it wasn’t moving around the bowl in the same way as a stand mixer.

The only solution was raising the speed to 60% so most of the butter was flung away from the beater.

After much scrapping down, including shifting a clump of sugar that had gathered in the middle of the bowl, I added the flour and the splashguard, which slid on easily.

This was effective at preventing flour puffing out, and allowed me to add liquid to the batter. However, I noted that again, unmixed ingredients tended gather in the centre of the bowl, and I had to scrape down the sides several times – although I liked that the mixer could be paused while I did this. To finish, I used the top speed to aerate the batter.

I found the bowl weighty to carry and tip the batter out into tins, as well as scrape out. Challenges aside, the sponge rose well and was fluffy. My feeling was that for smaller tasks, such as creaming, it was like using a hammer to swat a fly – the job got done but there are better solutions.

Dough is really where this mixer comes into its own. I tried Ooni’s recipe for classic pizza dough using the Halo Pro and its combination of dough hook and breaker bar.

Here, I found the timer invaluable for keeping track of how long the dough had mixed for, as well as the resting time. The splashguard was also brilliant at keeping the moisture and warmth in the bowl.

A few minutes from the end of mixing, I noticed that the dough began to stiffen as mixer head bobbed up and down, moving the splashguard.

This is normally when stand mixers motors start to strain and struggle but the Halo Pro didn’t whine.

The only issue I found was that it was hard to unscrew the breaker bar when it was still wet with condensation. 

However, I liked that the bowl could be used for proving as there was space for the dough to double in size – after two hours, there was room in the bowl to spare.

The pizza rose well when baked, bubbling up at the crust.

Should you buy it?

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