This is perfect advice! The only thing I would add is that its not just sourdough that would allow you to let them come to room temp for 3-5 hours before baking. That would work just the same with commercial yeast. With both sourdough and commercial yeast its all about how much yeast you use. The suggestion to try it first a few times is the best advice here... there are too many variables here caused not only by your temps in cooler, but your mixing temps etc. for someone to quote you on the perfect yeast amount to nail this. You have to just try it and see.
For the SD pizza dough reaching room temp in 3-5 hours seems like an eternity to me - can someone please elaborate why this is recommended?? Normally when I bake my SD boule (900g), I wait until my oven + dutch oven are preheated to 400F then I take the dough out of the fridge, score, and immediately place it in the dutch oven. There is 0 wait time needed to reach room temperature when I make a SD boule. Of course I am comparing two different things - SD boule to SD pizza dough - which I have never had experience before (the latter) so it makes me scratch my head. Secondly, if I pre-divide the pizza dough into 15 balls @ 180-200g each in the morning before I leave, saran wrap and place them inside a cooler, wouldn't that dramatically lessen the time needed for the dough to reach room temp? I imagine I could maybe take out one ball every 5 minutes making it a total of 75-90 minutes to do all 15 balls in succession.
Aside from all the experimenting, is there anything I should do / try / avoid to increase my chances of success? Should I just opt for a different type of crust to somehow this easier or am I going to run into the same trouble no matter what kind of pizza I attempt? I figured with a high heat oven @ 900F I might as well go for the goal and make use of the oven. But if that means potentially disappointing and starving 10-12 people I might need to change strategies. Thoughts?