How to shape wet dough

The secret to this method is having a nice wet dough. This allows you to store the dough and make a beautiful loaf. One of the most often questions is how to successfully shape the wet dough into a nice neat ball. If your loaf is not shaped well, it may spread out and be too flat or it will bake in a shape you just didn’t intend. Even if your dough is super wet, even wetter than we intended, within reason, it can still be successfully shaped and bake into a gorgeous loaf. We’ll show you how in this video. The trick is using more flour than you may think is okay, but as you’ll see you don’t work the flour into the dough; just use it to keep the dough from sticking to your hands. As we gently handle the dough we add more flour. This allows you to shape, without overworking the dough. Didn’t use a Bench Scraper in this video, but it is a great tool for keeping the dough from sticking to your hands.

The dough in this video is the Master recipe from The New Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, but this method can be used for any of our doughs.

Soft Pretzels – (How-to Video on Shaping the Dough)

Homemade Soft Pretzels Recipe | Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day

Part of the essence of the perfect New York pretzel is the way they look. Philadelphia has a pretzel culture too, but you’d never confuse it with its northern cousin, due to the shape. Philly has figure-8 knots and New York has well… pretzel shape. Admittedly, it’s nostalgia that makes me partial to the New York version. And you really should serve these homemade soft pretzels with mustard to complete the experience, grainy preferred.
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