Dishfunctional Designs: How To Bake Bacon! How To Bake Bacon In The Oven

Maybe it's because it's the way my mom always prepared it, but I always fried my bacon in a frypan on the stovetop - for years! Yes, I dealt with the greasy stove and frypan to clean up afterward, and the occasional splatter on your arm - ouch!

Then I finally got smart and thought, I don't know why I am frying this and dealing with this messy cleanup every time I fry bacon. It's time to start baking it.

And wow. What a difference baking your bacon makes! I am a new woman!! And it's sooo easy.

Here's all you have to do...

To bake your bacon you will need:

A roll of parchment baking paper

A large pan with a lip around the edge

Bacon

An oven

A pair of tongs

A plate with a paper towel or two

Directions:

Pull out a length of parchment paper from the roll that is a little bit larger than you pan. Tear the parchment from the roll and place it in your pan. Use your fingers to make deep creases around all edges of the parchment to fold the edges up. This is help catch all the grease that will bake out of the bacon so that you won't have to wash your pan when you're finished! If your parchment seems way too big or wide you can cut it down a bit with a pair of scissors.

Preheat your oven to 350° Fahrenheit

Lay your strips of bacon on your parchment covered pan as so:

One note here: Your slices of bacon will stick to each other if you overlap them, so try to give them some space from each other. If you can't that's fine, but when you go to flip them you will need a little bit more patience.

Put the pan in the oven and bake for 15 minutes, keeping an eye on it. If your bacon is very thin, bake for less time. If your bacon is thicker, you may need to bake it a bit longer.

Here is my bacon after 15 minutes:

Now grab those tongs and flip each slice of bacon over.

Once all of the slices have been flipped, return the pan to the oven and bake for an additional 10 minutes, adjusting time to the thickness of your bacon as well as to your preference for how you like your bacon cooked: chewy or crunchy.

Now my bacon is finished!