Hi Natasha, I'm sorry, but this isn't something we have much experience with either. However, I suspect if you made the decorations slightly ahead of time (out of the corn flour, flour and salt mixture) and placed them on the loaf right after you shaped it, the dough wouldn't indent as much. You're probably deflating the dough a bit when you apply the decorations, so placing them on right after you form the loaf may work best. If you apply the plait in this way, you may need to leave regular gaps, so the dough can still rise without being restricted by the braid. I'm not sure water alone will be enough to make them stay on with this method, so you might need to experiment a bit. If you don't want the decorations to be white, you could also experiment with coloring the decorations with food coloring, but making the decorations with dough means that they are going to rise and color up in the same way as your bread dough does. Tenting with foil might help, if you want to try making them out of regular dough, but they will still rise. Since this is such an important project for you, you might find taking this class worthwhile. 

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