More French bread iterations

I've given my French bread recipe a couple more tests now, and I have some more thoughts:

• Moisture is the most critical parameter. When it's wet, it's very elastic and sticks to everything. It doesn't shape very well, but still rises nicely. The crumb is nice and open, but the bread is still denser than I'd like. Maybe I need to bake it longer to drive out the extra moisture? When it's less wet, it's easier to work with, but sometimes the crumb comes out very dense. I think all this indicates that I have poor control of moisture, and that the ideal level is somewhere between the extremes I've tried.
• The knob on our oven temperature control has a ton of backlash, so I don't have good temperature control. Baking temperatures are +/- 25 deg F, maybe more.
• Fairly sensitive to salt. Once I accidentally put in a whole teaspoon of salt (the ink has rubbed off all our plastic spoon measures), and that was far too salty. At 1/2 teaspoon, you can taste the salt in the bread. At 1/4, it's just right. Haven't tried it without salt.
• 1/2 C whole wheat flour is a bit much. I went down to 1/4 C for a while, and am now doing about 1/8 C (2 T). I like the taste better with less whole wheat.