How to Shape Sourdough Bread
The world of sourdough offers endless possibilities of loaf shapes and designs! Before you can design the top of your loaf, you’ll want to shape your dough and let it cold ferment. This allows the flavor to develop further and continue to ferment before baking. A poorly shaped loaf of dough will not hold its shape well or rise well during the bake.
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A few tools I find most helpful in getting enough surface tension during the shaping process include:
A wooden surface/cutting board. This provides friction for the dough that I just couldn’t get on my countertops. Once I started shaping on a wooden surface I had consistent surface tension in the loaves, leading to a better rise during baking and a more open crumb on the inside!
A bench knife. This tool is super handy, literally. It helps lift your shaped dough off the surface while keeping all that work in tact. I also love using it the clean my wooden shaping surface afterwards, scraping up and dough that was left behind so I can get it into the trash!
A dusting of rice flour or all-purpose flour. This primes the surface so that the dough does not get clumped in one spot when placing it on the shaping surface after bulk fermentation. I love using this tea steeper to lightly coat the surface with flour so that I can avoid large clumps of flour getting stuck in my dough during the shaping process!
Lots of practice :) There is no better teacher than experience and sometimes it just takes time to figure out how to improve. It took me about 1 year of trial and error before I was consistently shaping loaves I was excited about!