You can divide the dough up however you like, braiding into arbitrary patterns. A few tips:
- Letting a braid sit for a bit makes it easier to deform. Hence, it’s best to lengthen many strands at once, making each one just a little bit longer as you take multiple passes.
- You’ll have about 2,000g of dough. Make that into at least 12 strands.
In terms of patterns:
- A knot only needs 1 strand. Great for if you tear one or have an odd-one-out.
- 2 strands yields a ring and is very pretty.
- You can make circles and lines out of any number of braids, just look up the patterns.
- For circles, leave a hole in the middle when you start since it tightens as you go.
- If you want to interleave two colors, a linear 6 has wonderful contrast.
To see a pattern before you commit dough to it, try the Braid Explorer.