This is what every book promised me over the years, and I have never seen anything amazing happen ever. It goes from not very uniform to uniform, but that’s all.
After years, I found out about giving the dough a bit of folding, or balling it up, or whatever is fitting, and now it doesn’t take forever, doesn’t stick to my hands, and seems at least as good.
Have you seen anything wondrous happen from lengthy hand kneading?
I’m beginning to see the pattern that these seem a lot drier than… at least what I’m doing today and probably what I was doing back then.
Recipes would try to warn sometimes about incorporating too much flour, you know, disaster, so maybe then I shied away from a lower hydration unnecessarily.
More hydration is probably safer because the final loaf doesn’t change size. More flour makes it bigger. However, too much hydration impedes gluten formation. Too little does as well. Find the balance that works for you.