I am capable of making bread. Honestly. I really can. However, my loaves NEVER resemble Suzanne's. They resemble, rather, a submarine that has been hit portside by several torpedos, and is listing in the water. So, I don't need a HOW TO MAKE bread lesson, only a HOW TO SHAPE bread dough in order to have it look like the bread pictures on this blog.

So…Do you roll it out and then roll it up? If so, tightly? loosely? Sure you may tell me,  “THEN tuck under the ends”, but my ends never quite tuck. As a matter of fact, I tuck both ends under the same way and I still get two different shaped ends. Do you tuck and pinch? or do you just tuck? OORRR..

Have I been ROLLING out and UP and I should just be SHAPING?

(Can you SENSE the sincere frustration in my post? It's not JUST frustration. It's a frustration/ embarrassment combo-thing going on..) I send my 7 year old son to school with homemade whole wheat bread and he is embarrassed that he has to TELL his classmates it's a pb & j SANDWICH. Yes. that's BREAD-not an edible, free-form art project that my bohemian mother makes.

Anyway, I appreciate in advance the collective wisdom that will be bestowed upon me, so that I too, may have a loaf of bread as beautiful as those on this forum.

Em

Hi, Em!  Well, for one thing, my breads don't always turn out looking perfect, LOL.  But, here's what I do.  First, you need to make sure your dough isn't too sticky.  It's just about impossible to work with sticky dough.  You want to have just enough flour, but not too much.  You can add some flour to your hands, just dust your hands, or dust the dough lightly, when you're ready to shape it.  (A lot of this is just practice, getting your dough right.)   Then I take the dough in both hands and I kinda bounce it in my hands, up and down, turning it as I bounce it, and that really helps the dough settle and shape.  I don't roll out my bread doughs to shape.  Sometimes I tuck the ends, but often just the bouncing and turning in floured hands will get it settled and shaped nicely.  Does that make sense?  And remember, it's just practice.  I've been making bread since I was a little girl, so I have an unfair advantage.  The more you make bread, the better you will get at it.  But even if the loaves look kinda ugly to you, they will still taste good, so it's not all that important, though I do understand the desire to make perfect-looking loaves!  Making bread is a creative thing, so it's fun to try to make the loaves pretty.  Let me know how it goes!

I hadn't been shaping it at all. That's probably why mine aren't “perfect” either. I'm going to do the smoothing and bouncing in my hand and tuck the ends under next time and see if it makes a difference. 

I just wanted to thank everyone for the great advice. it worked beautifully! I was never able to get anyone to understand what I was trying to ask. So thank you very much. I have beautifully shaped, delicious loaves of bread.