This time, I used only 1 1/2 cups water instead of 1 5/8 cups from original Mark Bittman's recipe. I used enough water for my fingers instead of flour when I touched dough. I think it covered enough water for this dough. This way works very well, when I was using flour for my fingers in Try 1 and Try 2, the dough sticked my fingers all the time and I added more and more flower to deal with it.
After all, baked bread looked perfect! I like it so much. This is the best hard crust bread that I have ever made. The only thing is crumb... I wish I could make less gummy crumb. I don't know why it like this. May be it depends on kind of flour. I use bread flour for this bread all the time, but I'm going to use all purpose flower next time and let see what happens.
