Light filters in from an open window over mounds of dough resting in Rima Timbaryan’s kitchen. Kindling crackles as it turns to ash in the tonir, and the sounds of women singing drift into the room.

On a recent night in Nazaret and Lena Derkevorkian’s backyard in Lexington, the tonir is humming. The semi-subterranean wood oven, one of only a few in the area, looks like a brick missile silo in ...