Dough Whisk
How we tested
When you mix thick cookie batter or sticky bread dough, the biggest problem is getting it to blend instead of merely clump on your mixing tool. Enter the King Arthur Flour Dough Whisk ($14.95), a thick, looping coil on a 15-inch wooden handle that supposedly blends both heavy and delicate batters without clogging.
To see if this tool lived up to its advertising, we made two batches each of our Chocolate-Chunk Oatmeal Cookies with Dried Cherries and Pecans and pizza dough, one using the tools specified in the recipe and the other with the dough whisk. The stainless steel coil easily cut through the chunky cookie ingredients, forming cohesive dough in half as many strokes as a whisk or wooden spoon. Sticky pizza dough slid right off the coil.
Though no match for a stand mixer, this tool beats any spatula or whisk when it comes to mixing dough by hand. For smaller jobs, there's also a "mini" (11 1/4-inch) version for $12.95.