This pizza destination has been on our list for a while, and although 1000º Wood Fired Pizza was about a 40 minute drive from Noblesville, this spot definitely lives up to the hype and brings pizza tourism to the small town of Mt. Summit, Indiana.
Betsy on Instagram told us to try the bagel breadsticks, and that there is a pizza that comes with 5 pounds of meat. Holy cow! I looked up the menu and their Carnivore pizza has 9 different meats!
When you pull into town, you can't miss it. The building is covered in flames! The inside is filled with vintage toys, tin signs, collectable Coca Cola stuff, and all the things you'd see on the TV show Pickers. I even pointed out a Popples lunch box, and Chris had no idea what I was talking about.
Right when you walk in you see their real wood fired pizza oven right behind the counter. They had us order before seating ourselves and gave us a number to display on the table. Chris loved that they had both Pepsi and Coke products and that you could get up and get your own refill whenever you wanted. Not sure if it was because of COVID or because of the real wood fired oven, but we did end up waiting like 50 minutes for our pizzas to come out - luckily they were worth the wait.
The bagel breadsticks were absolutely incredible. Chris says the breadsticks alone are worth the drive, and that's saying something! They have a golden patina on the outside and warm fluffy sponge inside. They were more like chunks rather than sticks. They were brushed with a slight buttery glaze and what appears to be a very light dill seasoning. The white sauce is their cream ranch sauce that I think included a bit of dill seasoning as well. It's the same ranch used on their Chicken Bacon Ranch pizza. Chris said the seasoning reminded him of Olive Garden breadsticks but with the texture of bagels.
You know me, if a pizza place mentions something as being their signature pie or their specialty, then I've got to try it. The menu says the Chicken Bacon Ranch pizza is their "flagship pie" so obviously that's what I got. Chris got pepperoni and bacon, his old standby.
The Chicken Bacon Ranch pizza is homemade creamy ranch sauce top with smoked chicken, bacon, green peppers and onions. The bacon was breakfast-fresh and not too hard, and the chicken itself had a hint of smoky flavor to it - which tied in nicely with the slight wood fired char on the bottom of the crust. The crust itself is a thin fast fired crust that remained foldable but still held the weight of the toppings without drooping over.
We compared the crust to Blaze pizza but like the best possible version of that same style. Chris said it's "like a 5 star Blaze pizza" or like the most elevated version of this thin fast fired genre of crust. I want to stress that by comparing it to Blaze we're not saying it's cheap or generic it's just in that same family of crust categories, or that this is the crust Blaze is trying to imitate.
The creaminess and smokiness meshed well, and the vegetables were fresh and flavorful without being too dominating. All in all a very successful greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts pizza, I can see why it's their flagship pie. The slight dill seasoning made it very unique and you can see the little dusting of those very fine hairlike green bits. I haven't had anything like it before on pizza.
Chris liked his pepperoni bacon, again commenting on the just-right bacon that was smoky and chewy but not too hard. Overall he thought it was very good but I think I liked mine better than he liked his. Gotta go for those signature pies!
Overall, even with the long wait time, this is definitely the kind of place we will take friends to show off this diamond in the rough. The best version of this thin wood fired crust we've had. Even the car ride there is an adventure, and you get to see some very quirky Americana lawns and feel like you are really getting away from the suburbs for the afternoon.