Eating at Lazzari, a new pizza restaurant in Portland’s Arts District, I learned a few surprising things. First, you can safely put your hand on the glinting copper dome of their Le Panyol pizza oven, built in Skowhegan from imported blocks of French white clay. Even though the deck routinely reaches 750 degrees F, and the surrounding cavity snorts rancorous blasts of air that top 1,000 degrees, the exterior remains cool to the touch.

“It’s really efficient,” chef Rich Maggi said. “We shut it down and brick it up at 1 o’clock in the morning, and when we come back six or seven hours later, it’s still at temperature.”Second, and perhaps even more surprising than not getting scorched by a wood-fired behemoth was this: Bakers make extraordinary meatballs.