Is It Possible To Stretch Pizza Dough Too Thin?
There are an endless number of ways to approach making a pizza, but one of its most defining features is its crust. Toppings can be mixed and matched, but once you start talking about different kinds of pizza, what you're really talking about is different styles of crust.
When people fight over whether Chicago deep dish, St. Louis Style, or New York pizza is best, it isn't a debate over toppings (via Bacino's). The main thing that separates these styles of pizza are their crusts.
Neapolitan pizza for example is even regulated by the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana (AVPN). The AVPN is an organization dedicated to protecting the art of true neapolitan pizza, and much of its detailed regulations focus on the dough and crust. Entire pages of regulations are devoted to fermentation times, and the consistency of the final crust is described as "soft, elastic, easy to manipulate and fold."
It's debatable which style of pizza crust rules supreme, but when making pizza at home it's important to play it safe and not go too thin.
Thin doughs can collapse under excess toppings
Even if you're going for a crispy, thin crust pizza, it is possible to still go too thin. According to Kitchn, rolling out a standard pizza dough too much can cause it to collapse under the weight of the toppings. Rolling the dough out between one-eighth and one-quarter of an inch is a great way to make sure that there is plenty of dough there to support whatever toppings you'd like.
A good option for those who do want to go thinner is St. Louis style pizza. According to legend, the original version of this dough was crafted by Imo's Pizza in 1964. An interesting fact about this style of pizza dough is that it's actually unleavened, per Serious Eats. This means that the dough won't rise in the heat of the oven and stays thin and crunchy even after it's finished baking. It's also usually cut into squares that won't sag, even under the weight of a supreme pizza's toppings. King Arthur has a great recipe for any diehard thin crust fans who can't get their own from Imo's Pizza.