Indirect heat mashing

I used the oven set to warm (170*F) to keep my mash warm during conversion. That got me to thinking...
Could I dough in with room temperature water, put the pot in th eoven set to 170* and leave it until the wort hits 170*? (stirring occasionally I'm thinking this will take around 2 hours.

Any reason it won't work? Or are there other negative factors I haven't considered?

Unless I hear bad things I'm going to run an experiment and see if it works over the holidays.

this would probably work in the sense that you would get sweet wort to ferment but i'm not sure it would make the best beer, foam stability and so on.

I think it would be good for a very fermentable and dry beer. The mash would spend quite a bit of time in the 145-150 range on its' way up to 170. It might work if you want to brew a super dry Saison or something like that otherwise I don't think it would work very well for most beers.