PJ, here’s another ides for holding your bread together before baking.
I never bought into the idea of a wicker bowl for bread baking; so lived with yucky towels until I noticed that I already had a better choice in my stack of parchment sheets.

Now, I just line an appropriate size bowl with parchment. The dough does a lot of the forming. I pre-heat an iron pot or oven safe crock of appropriate size to 450; then lift the loaf by the corners of the parchment and plop the whole thing in the hot pot.

I bake with a lid/cover for about 20-25 minutes then finish open to brown up. Sourdough or not, it’s been foolproof so far. The parchment gets a little singed; but the loaves have been fine.

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