I've been curious about this for a long time. A LOT of bread recipes, good if not great recipes from well known and highly esteemed bakers (won't mention any names), completely skip the autolyse. Based on your experiments, it seems as though it is not totally necessary for the most part, but best to do in certain situations where a certain quality is desired. I myself have made numerous good sourdough breads without autolyse, but they benefited from long slow ferments with fairly high hydration. I think Calvel was mainly dealing with large bakeries using primarily yeast, and dough kneaded by mechanical means. Sure it might work well for the home baker, but (and esp for sourdugh) not necessary.

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