My dream loaf-just a fantasy?

To date I've come across two recipes that I really like from the bread bakers apprentice, the French bread recipe, and the pain ancienne. The French bread has decent flavor and holds shape wonderfully so it's really easy to make into nice little bagettes (sp?). My only complaint is that the crumb is too fine. The pain ancienne is perfect in every way-amazing flavor, outstanding big crumb, crust is great too- but it's so wet that it would be really hard to form into bagettes so it has a pretty thin cross section as it spreads out a lot. Has anyone done some kind of hybrid? I was thinking of doing a 73% hydration all preferment spin on the French bread recipe. My ideal loaf would have the crumb and taste of the pain ancienne, but have the shape of a traditional French bread bagette.