Acid kill, hydration and French T65
so here’s the story so far.
Ive been using an everyday strong bread flour (I’m in Ireland so bread flour is just strong unless it’s Canadian then it’s extra strong :) and making a sourdough poolish with a ratio of 1:20:20 (it’s a schedule/space thing) After 8 hours or so I add to final dough and add commercial yeast. Until tonight.
Tonight I did the same procedure except I used a good French T65 flour. by the time I had finished mix the dough had eaten itself (autolyse ironically means self destruction) and I had to throw it all out. Now I understand it’s not good practice to have such a large ratio and should build instead but it has always been fine until now. My question is this:
the T65 clearly has a lower hydration point and so poolish is soupier and I have to drop overall hydration however I can only do that in final mix as poolish is 1:1 ratio. So am I right in thinking the wetter a dough is the more enzymatic activity there is thus the poolish ferments faster (because T65 has lower hydration) and so after 8 hours the yeast is exhausted and only bacteria is left to feed on the glutenous soup...?
any ideas? And while I’m here has anyone experience with T65. I really like this flour but it’s a different beast to what I’m used to. I’ve dropped 2% hydration but after looking around some people suggest as much as 10% which seems a little extreme.
thanks in advance