Adjusting Percentage of Levain in Recipes
I have been working my way through FSWY and have found his times to be way to long. I live in California and my kitchen temperatures are closer to 80. I have been just cutting down on the times of all the fermenting steps, but I am worried I am losing flavor. My question for the moment:
If I am building a wholly sourdough bread and want to increase my bulk fermentation time, am I losing something by just decreasing the amount of levain? For example, I want to let it bulk ferment on the counter overnight, but the country blond dough I just made turned into liquid with a 11 hour bulk ferment (I followed his directions and went to bed at about hour 4). For the next recipe, instead of using 216 g of levain (12% of the flour), can I cut back to 120g and see what happens? I remember somebody writing that this might be detrimental because I am cutting back the percentage of pre-fermented dough. I don't understand all the relations at work here. Maybe do a poolish and a levain? I am not sure how that would work and what benefit I would get.
Does cutting back on the levain seem like the best option here to keep long bulk fermentation times? Maybe retarding? That seems like a huge temperature change, however.
Thanks!