Braiding bread dough. Where the heavy work lies

Basically as soon as the dough starts to fight you and spring back from your efforts to elongate it, stop. Let that rope rest for 10 minutes. If you keep fighting it, the dough will just get stronger and will spring back more aggressively.

I might make as many as three passes? Three (or more) balls of dough to a "batard" shape, let it rest. Roll them out a bit more, now they're like a baguette maybe. Rest again. Maybe one more pass to elongate a bit more, maybe not. Anyways, let it rest again, and then braid. So it might take me 30 minutes of time, but I'm only working for 5-10 minutes of that time.

Remember that you can get a lot of length during the braiding process as well, you can tug each rope out a bit as you lay them over one another. It takes a bit of practice to get an even braid this way, but it can be done.

50 minutes for 4 12 inch "ropes" is just way too much work.  You don't tell me what you are doing, but here are some thoughts:

1. Your dough may start the process too dry and over mixed - when you are dividing it, it should not be fighting you.
2. You want to pre shape effectively.  Flatten the dough into a rough square and then roll it up to form a "mini rope" - it will be easier to shape from there.
3. Let the pre shape really relax - 20 minutes or more
4. Is your work surface steady?  If you are using a bread board on a countertop - put a damp towel underneath so that it does not move - that way your effort goes into rolling dough, not moving your work surface
5. Your work surface should have no (or very minimal) flour.  In dry climates a spray bottle will dampen the work surface enough to get good traction.  You should feel some traction between the dough and the bench (yeah, "some" - there's the trick)
6. Take two hands overlapped and roll the "mini rope" into a dog bone shape.
7. Then with force originating from your shoulders, separate your hands to roll the dough using a downward and outward pressure to elongate the dough.  This is not delicate baguette rolling - this is real pressure on the dough.  Your fingertips and the heel of your hand should maintain contact with the bench.  You should hear little schritching sounds of skin against bench when you roll.
8. If the dough fights you, let it rest - but I can roll a 24 inch rope on two tries (max) and I'm no pro baker.

I'm sure folks will point you to videos that show how to do this shaping and those can be helpful, but this one area where I feel it is especially important to get the feel of how the dough should roll out.  It really does go rather quickly and easily once you get the hang of it.

Hope this helps.

I tried to make a 10 inch pizza dough and I could not get the dough to stretch beyond 4 inches.  It just kept coming back to 4 inches.  Was I having the same issue of not allowing enough time to relax and maybe over kneading?