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In: Technology
Yes, the temperature of the air drops. The thermistor/thermocouple measuring the temperature is behind the metal hull of the oven though and not just dangling in the air in the middle, and it will take a couple seconds at least before it starts showing a lower temperature.
In addition to the comments, i did a test on my oven, bosch series 8. I set it to 200c and let it get to it. I had temp probes set in the middle of the oven however they were way over 200c around 15c higher.
Also when i opened it and closed it the temp dropped but not by much, when i closed it again, the fan started spinning way more to ramp up the lost temp.
Depends. Some ovens show the temperature setting not the actual temperature. Even if the oven claims to show the actual temperature, the display itself depends on what the programmers of the computer inside the oven want to display. In some cases, it might be a time averaged temperature. And any temperature measurement device has latency since it may not react to quick changes in temperature. And temperatures may not drop much (or at all) if the door is only opened briefly.
Bottom line is that, unless the oven is expensive and designed for professional use, the temperature display might only be somewhat accurate.
I assume you are talking about an oven that displays its current temperature (rather than just having a light that indicates it is heating). Typically, these ovens are set up to only show a real current temperature (estimate) while they are pre-heating or cooling down. Once they have reached their set temperature, they will keep displaying that temperature constantly, even though in reality ovens never maintain a perfectly constant temperature. See, ovens are on a thermostat cycle, just like (probably) the heating system in your home. If the temperature drops below a set point, the heating elements are switched on until the temperature is back to a second set point. For instance, if your oven is set to 400 degrees, then it might switch the heating on (or to a higher setting) when the temperature drops below 390, and switch off again (or to a lower setting) when it climbs above 410 (these numbers are made up – I have no idea how close together the set points typically are for ovens).
In theory, your oven could report all these temperature variations on its display, but my guess is this is deemed too confusing for the typical user. When switched on, we expect ovens to be either pre-heating or in set-temperature mode. That’s how ovens used to work, after all, before the digital age. So, to indicate that the oven is in steady-state operation, they made a design choice to have it keep displaying the set temperature.
It’s possible that the oven would issue a warning, or indeed switch to displaying the current temp, if the temperature dropped by a lot. But some drop in temperature is expected when opening the oven door, and so within this expected range it likely won’t do anything, except switch on the heating to compensate.
It’s worth realizing too that, while (some) hot air does escape when opening the oven, the oven itself is still hot. That is, the walls, heating elements, grills and baking trays, cooking vessels, etc. all retain their heat for a longer time. The air inside the oven doesn’t actually carry all that much heat energy, as air has a pretty low heat capacity per volume. So once you close the oven door again, the air heats up more quickly than if you started heating your oven from scratch, due to all the hot thermal mass that is still in the oven (and indeed, one way to better stabilize your oven temp is to put some more thermal mass in there, like a pizza stone or some ceramic cooking vessels).
If you want to keep track of the actual temperature fluctuations in your oven, you can buy an oven thermometer. Generally, bigger, more expensive ovens are better at maintaining a constant temperature, compared to smaller, more basic models.
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