ALL the flour needs to soak for at least a day at cool room temperature to fully saturate and start autolysis. Use enough cold water to make the dough stick together, but not to be slippery. Only add the other stuff after a day (salt, yeast, oil etc) and rest of water as per recipe
Edit Under French law a baguette must have 3 to 11 hours of autolysis I find local flour to be not as strong, so use a whole day
Domestic ovens can't get hot enough for this type of bread. To help, remove everything from the oven that you don't need, and just use a thin steel tray to bake the bread on. Preheat the oven for up to 30 minutes with temperature on MAX. It should take no more than 20 minutes to bake, though I am not sure if this will effect taste, but will effect texture. Only use a small amount of hot water to steam the oven
For extra flavour try wholemeal flour as it has more tasty stuff in it, 50% to 100% wholemeal will do. If the wholemeal looks too coarse, give it a few moments in a food processor
Also try different yeast types, and brew your yeast up with tasty flours or other sugars to start it
Another option is to try a percentage of barley flour. Barely doesn't make a great bread, but helps the soaking/sugar breakdown process, and makes the taste more interesting. You can make flour from barley meal with a few minutes in a food processor