The prescence of leoparding alone also doesn't necessarily indicate that the crust couldn't be improved upon. Had some VPN NP this weekend and while the crust had leoparding it was on the dry, slightly dense and chewy side. Not what I would call perfection. Pies were still good though.
I had a guy over for one of my pizza parties a few weeks back and, to my surprise, he brought four doughballs and a little tupperware full of cheese curds. I asked him if he had made the dough himself and he laughed and said no. About 7 years ago he worked and made pizzas in Sakuragumi(you can see images of their latest pies here
), which is a super-overpriced AVPN place here in the town I live in. He has remained good friends with the owner and told the owner he was going to a pizza party, to which the owner insisted he take some dough and cheese. Well after the kids were off happily playing with full bellies of pies from my dough recipe, I asked this guy to go ahead and make something "Sakuragumi" for us. He obliged and, with pretty good skills, slapped out a couple of doughballs, topped them with stuff he brought from Sakuragumi and launched them into the oven. Again, with pretty good skills and seemingly not much rust given 7 years away from pizza making, he rotated and finished the pies. The result? Dry, slightly dense, chewy and way too salty for my taste. Leoparding was almost non-existent, which is in contrast to your photos of similarly inferior, yet well leoparded, pies. What restaurant was that, if I may ask?
I think that, generally speaking, establishments go with a much less hydrated dough than most of us do, what Craig uses and recommends, and what is done is some of the better places found in Naples, like Da Michele( I can only suspect a hydration of at least 60% judging by the videos I've seen). This could explain the dryness. But I think that the pies in your photos look to me like they had an insufficient amount of yeast and were not handled well during the latter stages and possibly the stretching of the dough as well. I can achieve something like that if I use a well prepared dough at a lower 55% or 56% hydration, but with a shorter fermentation time, balled tightly and slightly cold(had a couple of experiments turn out this way back in December). Then, instead of pushing the air toward the outer rim, I push actual dough to the outer rim, so the puffiness is an illusion and can be directly attributed to the ratio of dough that's in the rim, as opposed to the amount of dough in the center of the pie. Leoparding? Yes. Good dough? Absolutely in the ballpark. Prepared correctly? No. Tasted good? Yes, but left a lot to be desired as far as NP goes.
The best way I can summarize is that to achieve leoparding is an indicator that the one has reached a quality "milestone" in terms of the ultimate Neapolitan dough and resulting crust. From there, it's up to the individual pizzaiolo if he/she wants to improve any further or achieve a specific flavor, aroma, texture, etc..
The way that I look at it is, if you achieve a beautiful pie that looks anything like the one on the front of the Caputo bag of flour, you've reached the Major Leagues of what can be considered Real Neapolitan Pizza. I mean A LOT had to line up and go right, just to get to that point. But once you're there, a whole new standard of "quality" gets applied. Now that you've reached the Major leagues, do you wanna bat .200 and be satisfied? That is up to you. If I were TXCraig1, with the experience he has, I would say, "show me your leoparded pie first, then tell me what's wrong with it, from a flavor/texture standpoint, and we'll go from there!"