Every few years things that bakers have known for millennia are rediscovered. There are often a few new variants to the tricks, but most of it is the same old things all over again.

Letting the flour and water sit for a half hour (before adding salt, yeast or any enrichments like fats, milk, eggs or sugar) is often called autolysis, and was championed by Professor Raymond Calvel, who is credited for having rescued French breadmaking from mediocrity after WW2. Now there are national standards for things like French baguettes and national training centers for French bakers.

His book, Le Goût du Pain (The Taste of Bread), is hard to find even in libraries, but I learned a lot from it, even though it isn't really so much a cookbook as a textbook on bread ingredients and techniques. (It has several pages just on salt.) One of my goals in learning French is to be able to buy and read that book in French, if I can find an affordable copy. (Reviewers of the English edition of the book seem divided on whether the translator did a good job translating and updating the book.)

Another thing I've rediscovered lately is to let my dough rest for at least 15 minutes after pre-shaping before the final shaping.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 3 months ago by Mike Nolan.

Jeffrey Hamelman listed 12 steps for making bread in his book, "Bread":

Scaling
Mixing (which may include Autolyse as a sub-step)
Bulk Fermentation
Folding
Dividing
Preshaping
Bench Rest
Shaping
Final Fermentation
Scoring
Baking
Cooling

Some sources list additional steps, such as making pre-ferments, mashes or soakers, recipes that use a sourdough starter might have steps to deal with getting a portion of the starter ready for use. (The way this is done in a commercial kitchen is somewhat different than how it is done in many home kitchens, a professional baker is never going to throw away half of his starter when feeding it, so feeding the starter becomes part of the process of getting a portion of the starter ready for the day's breadmaking.)

Many of the recipes on the BBGA site have First bulk rise, Folding and Second bulk rise steps. I've seen some baguette recipes that go through as many as four bulk rises, with folding or punching the dough down between bulk rises.

This is one of those books that every time I read it, it messes with my mind for a while. I"m not sure why, I guess I may take some of his steps a bit too literally.

"You have to know when to break the rules." (from The Golden Child)