Best Food Processors for Pie Dough of 2026

Fourteen cups and 18 pounds is the biggest, heaviest answer to pie dough here, and the weight earns its keep: the base sits still on the counter while the blade works a cold, stiff dough, with none of the creeping you get from a lighter machine.

We recommend it to anyone whose pies arrive in threes. A triple batch fits with room to spare, the 720-watt motor doesn't change pitch when the dough stiffens, and it's quiet enough to run while the rest of the house is asleep — the noise, or the lack of it, is what surprised us most given the size. The controls are a lever: on, off, pulse. For pie dough that's less of a handicap than it sounds, because short pulses are exactly what the job wants, though you are the one deciding when to stop.

The accessory set is the other thing to know before you order. There's no plastic dough blade in the box; the metal chopping blade does the work, and Cuisinart lists kneading among the machine's jobs. We don't mind it for crust — a sharp blade cuts butter into flour fast, and speed is on your side while the fat is still cold — as long as you pulse in short bursts and stop while the dough looks shaggy. If bread is a big part of your baking, the gentler plastic paddle is the tool you'll miss.

Cleaning is the simplest here: blade and two discs come out, bowl and lid go in the dishwasher, and there's no chute assembly to take apart. The catch is where it lives. A machine this heavy is one you leave out rather than haul from a low cabinet, so it wants a dedicated corner.

Twelve hundred peak watts is the most power in the Ninja line and second only to the Breville here, and that headroom is the whole reason to step up from our top pick: a 12-cup bowl with enough torque to keep turning when the dough gets stiff and the batch gets big.

Everything else about it is familiar Ninja — the same Auto-iQ dough preset, the same plastic dough blade, the same load-and-press method, with a third more bowl than the 9-cup machine. Seven speeds is more than dough will ever need, and you'll leave the dial in the same place, but they're there for the rest of what the machine does.

We kept reaching for it during a run of holiday baking, when the gap between 9 cups and 12 cups is the gap between two rounds of dough and one. If you're going to clean the bowl and blade anyway, doing it once is worth real time.

Outside of dough, the feed chute is the strongest argument for it: a whole tomato or a halved onion drops in without pre-cutting, and the three-part pusher lets you match the opening to the food. More pieces also means more to wash, and the lid is where that time goes.

A 30-year warranty on the motor is the kind of number that makes you stop and read twice, and Breville backs it with a 1450-watt direct-drive induction motor — the most powerful machine here by a fair margin. In a pie-dough machine that buys headroom: cold butter, a big batch, and a blade that doesn't slow down.

For crust alone, though, this is more machine than the job needs. Our top pick turns out the same flaky dough for far less money, and what the Sous Chef adds is capacity and the rest of the kitchen work, not better pie.

The capacity is real: 16 cups is the largest bowl here, a dough blade comes in the box, and the 5.5-inch three-in-one chute takes whole tomatoes, blocks of cheese, and potatoes for fries without trimming. The parts feel heavier and better finished than the plastic on the Ninjas, and the 24-position slicer becomes the thing you reach for once it's already out. What you're paying for past the bowl is a motor the maker expects to outlast the appliance, and a set of discs that turn it into your main prep tool. That's a different purchase from a pie-dough machine, and worth it only if the second job is real.

Seven cups is the smallest bowl in this group, and that's the entire case for it. A single crust fills it roughly halfway — enough room for the flour to move, not so much that the blade spins through empty space — and the whole machine is small enough to earn a permanent square of counter where a 14-cup Cuisinart would end up in a cabinet.

We liked it for the small jobs. The 600-watt motor is modest next to the Ninjas, but it's built for dough — Cuisinart rates it for kneading batch after batch — and it runs quietly enough to use before anyone else is up. The dough blade is in the box, which makes it the only Cuisinart here that ships with one.

The detail we ended up appreciating most is the second lid. The full cover with the feed tube is for slicing and shredding; a flat cover seals the bowl for chopping and dough and drops the height enough to slide under a shelf. It's the difference between a machine that gets put away and one that gets used.

The warranty is the shape Cuisinart uses across this line — three years on the unit, five on the motor — and it's more coverage than either Ninja carries. What it doesn't change is the arithmetic: a double crust still means two rounds in this bowl.