To help us provide you with free impartial advice, we may earn a commission if you buy through links on our site. Learn more
- Easy to use
- Generous capacity
- Breaker bar is a game-changer
- Not well suited to low volume mixing
- Expensive
It was only a matter of time before we got the Ooni Halo Pro stand mixer. After years of success with its expanding range of pizza ovens and baking accessories, Ooni has dipped its toes into the world of indoor kitchen appliances. The Halo Pro is specifically designed for those of us who make a lot of our own dough and bread. Unlike planetary mixers, the Halo has a rotating bowl and a removable breaker bar, as well as rotating attachments, making it closer in design to a spiral mixer you’d find in a professional kitchen or bakery.
As impressive as that is, this stand mixer also comes with a plethora of other thoughtful designed features including an easy-lift head, a generous bowl capacity and seriously stylish touch screen with timer. Most importantly though, the Halo Pro produces amazing dough for both pizza and bread.
What do you get for the money?
At £699, the Ooni Halo Pro is competing with the likes of more premium options from KitchenAid Artisan Bowl-Lift models and Kenwood’s Chef Series. These are some pretty big boots to fill but I think Ooni has done a pretty good job at carving out its own niche in a fairly saturated market.
The Halo Pro is a spiral stand mixer, rather than a more traditional planetary mixer. As well as the attachments moving around in a circular motion, the bowl also spins, for even mixing. It also features a removable, static breaker bar, which simply slots in above the dough hook on the machine’s head. This helps to break the dough apart while mixing and stop it from climbing up the dough hook, allowing the mixer to knead more gently and evenly. This is something planetary mixers are famously bad at, so it’s a great addition to have.
As well as a single 7.5l stainless steel bowl, breaker bar and dough hook, the Halo Pro also comes with a geared whisk and flexible edge beater, ideal for batters, icing, meringue and more.
Design-wise, the Halo Pro is super slick with a curved body, touchscreen top and internal lighting to help you better see what you’re mixing. When I was lucky enough to see it in action at Ooni’s official launch event, the brand said the outer shell had been specifically designed with doughy fingers in mind – and you can tell. There are very few nooks and crannies for rogue flour to find its way into and there are easy to use buttons on both sides of the mixer’s head for when you need to lift it.
The Halo Pro is on the large side at 25.1 x 43.7 x 34.3cm (WDH) but Ooni has done its best to keep everything as compact as possible. You’ll still want to avoid lugging it around though, as it weighs in at a massive 14.5kg.
What’s it like to use?
It was immediately obvious to me that the Halo Pro was going to be a real joy to use. Despite being quite different from my own KitchenAid mixer, the controls felt very intuitive and I only found myself reaching for the instructions once during setup.
There are a number of quality of life features that are worth highlighting. This includes the simple but wildly convenient addition of an angled hole built into the splash guard, allowing water or oil to be easily drip fed into the machine while running. I also want to come back to the Halo Pro’s tilt head buttons. Having a button on either side of the machine’s head near the front is great if you need to store your mixer in a particular way due to space constraints, as you’ll always have easy access. It’s also great if, like me, you’re left-handed as you have the option to lift from either side.
In terms of preparing dough or indeed cake batters, it’s so easy to get to grips with. The Halo Pro’s attachments, including the breaker bar, are simple to remove and replace as needed. The responsive touch screen lets you set a timer (with or without an alarm) and increase the speed from 5% to 100% in small 5% increments for an incredible level of control.
Lower speeds are ideal for delicate doughs and starting off flour-heavy mixtures that tend to throw themselves out of the bowl, while the higher speeds are ideal for high intensity whisking and beating, such as when you’re whipping egg whites for meringue or making buttercream.
The Halo Pro states it can hold a whopping 5kg of dough or 20 dough balls, depending on how hungry you are. In my tests, I put the Halo through its paces, filling it to max capacity with pizza dough. The machine didn’t struggle at all – unlike my KitchenAid, which made some awful movements and sounds at its maximum stated capacity, with dough climbing up the hook constantly, forcing me to stop and redistribute the dough by hand.
However, It’s also worth noting that this machine has quite a high minimum capacity – 1kg to be exact. This means if you’re just making a small amount of pizza dough or bread, you might find it doesn’t mix quite as well. I found this to be the case in my tests, where I saw the dough climbing up the hook, though it still performed better than a planetary mixer.
What are the results like?
As you might have gathered by now, I’ve been nothing but impressed with the Ooni Halo Pro. Not only is it very easy to use, the results with bread and dough are phenomenal. Pizza dough is evenly mixed and the ultra-slow speed settings allow you to recreate hand kneading movements at large volumes, minus the wrist pain. Not only that, my dough always came away from the mixer clean, even with higher hydration recipes that tend to be super sticky.
The automated timer also meant I could step away from the mixer without worrying about overmixing, as the machine automatically turns off after a chosen time. When you’re mixing large batches of dough that require 10+ minutes of time in the bowl this is so helpful, as it also allows you to prepare other things in the meantime.
“But what about cakes?” I hear you cry. I think the more discerning baker might still prefer to use a classic planetary mixer but during my tests, I had no qualms whatsoever about its mixing ability. Twelve egg whites whipped up to fluffy perfection for meringue without a struggle and I was able to mix almost 2l of cake batter without the machine kicking up any fuss whatsoever. Though for its hefty price tag, I wouldn’t expect anything less.
Should you buy the Ooni Halo Pro stand mixer?
If you are already considering a more premium stand mixer but predominantly want it to help with pizza dough and different types of bread dough, choosing the Halo Pro over others is a no-brainer. The breaker bar, gentle kneading and subtle features, such as the in-built timer and easy-lift head, make this a joy to use.
Those more interested in using a stand mixer for creaming ingredients or mixing at high speed might still want to consider a traditional planetary mixer – they can be cheaper, too. However, the Halo Pro will still deliver great results when making cakes and you also have the added benefit of being able to knead gorgeously light and stretchy dough at the touch of a button – something planetary mixers can’t really compete with.
