Traditionally brick lined pizza ovens routinely go up to 900F/500C without any big boom and those don’t even HAVE doors. There have been a couple of people attempting to modify a self-cleaning oven to disable the safety lock and use it for pizza but with not much success.
Hell, my fireplace gets up to around 950F (and most likely over - that’s where my thermometer stops). I haven’t noticed any explosions.
Alton Brown actually recommends using the self-cleaning setting for certain cooking applications in his book I’m Just Here for the Food. I don’t have the book handy; all I remember is that he couldn’t find an oven manufacturer that would endorse this particular method.
Well I admit I could be wrong about this one but ----
—that is what I was taught. Safety lock is a safety feature. Opening up a closed environment at 800 degrees would cause oxygen to rush in and be a big BOOM.
I don’t think that a constantly OPEN oven would be any problem at all.
Again a constantly OPEN oven at whatever super high temps could not really cause a problem.
And—thinking about it–It seems like it would depend on how dirty your oven was ===how much organic material yet unburned====was still in there when you opened the door. (I saw many super scungy ovens as an appliance tech—you are talking maybe a 1/4 inch of crapola lining the walls)
I still think that what I was taught was essentially correct. Lot of organic material still in the oven (we are talking seriously filthy oven here) and oven at 800 degrees or so. ----------and you are able to open the door somehow? And all that oxygen gets to rush in to a previously closed environment?
BIG BOOM.
A little off subject ------but that does remind me of a rather famous case where a Sears tech had a service call on a self cleaning oven. Found it sitting out in the front yard —doused with chemical spray and soaked with water.
Seems the customer had waited many many years and had used her oven an awful lot and finally decided to do a self clean.
All that crap has to burn off from the oven and come out that tiny vent. The smoke was so bad from the burn-off that it set off all the smoke alarms in her house and terrified the customer.
She called the fire department-----who came out to a house so full of smoke you couldn’t see.
And they did their job. Pulled that sucker oven out of the house and into the front yard and doused it with water and chemical spray.
Customer asked if her seriously ruined oven was covered by her maintenance agreement.
NOPE -------- Sorry 'bout that.
I’m no chemist, but unless you had an incredibly filthy oven to start with, I have difficulty seeing how the oxygen concentration would be much less inside than outside - in a big oven you already have a lot of air to support the combustion.
It seems to me that there is a much more obvious reason why you want to lock an oven that is operating at 900 degrees. It’s not exactly going to do your face and upper body much good to get a nice blast of 900 degree air!