I made my first focaccia last week. It was okay, but I ended up incorporating a lot of flour into the mix because I couldn't knead it on my work surface without it all getting stuck.

After some research, it seems many people don't knead their high hydration doughs and instead do some folds over the course of a couple of hours instead.

Is there any reason to knead high hydration dough that I'll be missing out on if I'm just going for some folds instead? I'm primarily interested in focaccia and pizza dough.