Glenn,
Since I first came up with that little table, I found reasons or came upon additional information to lead me to make some changes. For example, when I made Neapolitan style pizzas in my home oven, I found it useful to use a thickness factor above 0.10 because I needed a much longer bake time than if I had an authentic high-temperature Neapolitan oven, where a lower thickness factor would be desirable. Also, Evelyne Slomon, a member of this forum and the author of The Pizza Book, gave me information that suggested that the NY "elite" styles ranged from about 0.06-0.09 in terms of thickness factors, depending on the particular pizza operator (e.g., Totonno's, Lombardi's and John's in the examples she gave me). Also, when I played around with the cracker-style doughs, I found that I preferred a thin and crispy crust, which I was able to achieve using a low thickness factor. However, the basic recipe (DKM's recipe) appeared to have a thickness factor of closer to 0.09. For the deep-dish style, which is not covered in the table you referenced, I found that a thickness factor range of 0.11-0.135 to be fairly typical.
The point I am making is to use thickness factors as a guide. It will usually take some experimentation to find the values that work best for any given style.
I often use thickness factors for diagnostic purposes. For example, if someone tells me that he is making a 14" pizza with a dough ball weight of 26 ounces and is getting a gummy crust, I can tell from the thickness factor in that case, about 0.17, that most likely the problem is a dough that is too thick to bake completely.
Peter
