How to Shape Dough

I scored the next dough into the oven differently and got more height. So many variables.

(Retarded doughs so not considering fermentation as much of an influence here.)

Thank you for sharing your technique Melissa. As I saw it noted by a prior reply, I was also frustrated trying to duplicate them as my dough must have a much higher hydration. Mine is sticky and wet. I believe around 75%. Yours looks more like my pizza dough.

I have a soupy beet dough that’s bench resting and leaving purple smears everywhere – I’ll see if I can video shaping it :slight_smile:

Here it is! I sped it up by 1.2x so it would be under 1 minute. I work more slowly in real life.

I’ve followed your technique for shaping dough, but it still spreads in the oven. I’m wondering if I’m not shaping it for a long enough time. I test the dough to see if it’s proofed by indenting it with a finger, and it passes the test.

You can try either lowering the hydration in your recipe – a stiff dough spreads less – or do a shorter bulk fermentation or final proof because a less fermented dough tends to spread less. That said, you don’t want a dramatically under-fermented dough as the resulting bread will be dense and gummy (probably with a few oddly large holes).

Finally, you can try doing more gluten development during the bulk fermentation. Here’s a blog of videos showing lots of techniques, and a recipe that employs several of them.

I just baked a couple of breads from the same dough. All else equal but during shaping, I made one a little rounder and one a little longer. I figured I’d share so you can see how that small difference impacts the way the breads turn out. The folding and rolling was the same. The shaping difference was more in pinching ends and stretching at the end.

This pic is just after shaping. Left is rounder; right is longer.

After 20 minutes RT (room temp) and overnight refrigeration, they look the same-ish, but differences appear when baked.

The scoring was identical, but the scores bloomed differently and the loaves sprang? sprung? differently too.


In that last photo, it looks like I cut lower on the bread on the right (the longer one), but I actually scored both where my basket liners indent the doughs (I trace the line), and the liners are positioned the same in both baskets, so I’m pretty sure the score height on the loaves was identical before baking.

Here’s the formula:

60% bread flour
20% sprouted hard red spring wheat
20% wit wolkering (similar to white sonora)
78% water
25% sourdough starter
2.3% salt (2% if you incl flour from the starter)

Rounder batard

Longer batard

Here is a cool video of shaping a batard with a nice slow demonstration. The dough looks like it has relatively high hydration and gluten strength. Probably about 30 seconds in is when the shaping starts.

So can someone share with me a technique for rolling my cinnamon bread up so when its baked the swirls are not open and thus the bread has wholes in it and the raisins fall out and jam falls through. It’s funny to think about when I am typing this but it’s not funny when you get jam on your shirt.
Thanks so much

Hopefully one of these tips helps with the jam-shirt situation!

The gaps are from steam coming off the dough as it bakes. One set of solutions given by Homemade Cinnamon Swirl Bread - Sally's Baking Addiction are to brush the dough with egg white before adding the cinnamon-sugar mixture and/or poke the dough with a toothpick just before baking to make steam release holes.

This article https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/blog/2020/11/12/5-ways-to-reduce-the-gap-in-cinnamon-swirl-bread has some different approaches depending on the nature of the issue.
Add flour to the swirl ingredients if the problem is melting and running off.
Chop the raisins and toss them in the filling if their size is responsible for the gaps
Brush with egg wash (full egg) before sprinkling filling; it acts as glue.
Roll the dough tightly but not too tightly.

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Melissa thank you for your quick response. I ahead brush with butter and leave a margin around dough. I will try cutting the raisins up and be careful rolling it up.

Joy to you

I wouldn’t use butter or any other fat. It prevents the two sides of the dough from sticking together.

You can also soak the raisins in lukewarm water (or rum, brandy, etc.) for 20-30 minutes, then pat dry. Dust softened raisins with flour and sieve off excess. Sprinkle over dough (before adding cinnamon and sugar) and press lightly. This method is usually used to get the raisins to stick to the dough. It should work here as well.