Slap and fold help
Hi everyone! So I decided to try my hand at slap and fold today. I watched some youtube videos on how to do it and read through the perfect loaf guide but I still have some questions after doing it the first time. For reference I decided to start trying it with this recipe from king arthur (https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/french-style-country-bread-recipe [1]), since I enjoy it and its fairly quick to make. It did work out in the end though it took me quite a bit longer to get the dough to where I think it should be. Here are my questions:
1) The dough seemed to go back and forth through phases where it was become tighter and then becoming long and slack. As far as I could tell when I was working more confidently and quickly this happened less but still occurred. I wonder if it was something I was doing that was making it go through these phases or if that's a normal part of the process?
2) It took quite awhile for it to stop sticking to my fingers. I tried wetting my hands once or twice and that seemed to help but it would stick to me again once they dried out. This did seem to improve towards the end but the videos I've watched don't seem to stick that much so I'm assuming it has to do with me still learning the technique. I don't mind sticky fingers but having it stick so much made it a bit harder to do the slap and fold. Are there ways to keep it from hanging on to your hands so much?
3) Occasionally when I would do the fold part it would flip over to the other side of the dough on the counter and it made it a lot stickier. I'm assuming that this is because it was the opposite side of the dough but is there a good way to quickly come back from this when it happens?
Those are the main questions I have. Thanks in advance for any tips!!