Shaping dough

So the typical process is mix -> knead -> "bulk ferment". At that point, the dough is bouncy, full of bubbles but with no real structure to it. If you had put it in a tin for the bulk ferment, then you could put it immediately into a hot oven and bake it. You'd have bread, but it might be full of irregularly sized bubbles/uneven "crumb".

However at this point rather than just bake it, you scale it (ie. weigh it, cut it into loaf sized lumps of dough if needed), let it rest a bit, shape it, then leave it to prove (ie. rise again), then bake.

The shaping here helps to give the dough some structure - to help control the way it rises, and to make it look pretty. Even if rising the dough in a tin or banneton, etc. giving it an initial shape will help it to rise the way you want it and help distribute the bubbles evenly.

The video above is good too - note than sometimes there is pre-shaping then final shaping too - sometimes with a resting time. A lot of that comes from mimicking the way a commercial process works - e.g. this morning I scaled and pre-shaped (into little boules) dough for 14 loaves - by the time I'd done that, I could them start on the first one I did to give it its final shape - if just doing one loaf, then cover it, wait 5-10 minutes, then do the final shape. The resting lets the gluten relax a bit making it easier to take on the final shape.

-Gordon