Autolyse and Gluten
I am new to bread baking and have about a dozen batches of bread under my belt, most of them sourdough and a few Tang Zhong loaves. I use a Kitchen Aid mixer to mix my dough.
I just read through this scaled recipe for Peter Reinhart's Italian bread:
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/8437/pr039s-italian-biga [1]
and noticed that it does not call for what I understand as a true autolyse (rest prior to adding salt). If I made this bread with an autolyse instead of the instructions, would it produce an inferior loaf?
Also, I see that a great number of artisan recipes call for stretch and folds to build gluten, yet for each of the sourdough loaves I've baked, while they had a tender crumb, did not have enough structure for them to 'stand' up, and ended up with a slightly flattened shape. I'm guessing this is because I didn't build enough gluten into the dough, or could it be that the flours I'm using (Central Milling Artisan Select and KAF Sir Galahad) aren't strong enough?
Thanks for any advice you can share.
John