My grandmothers, mother, and I always cooked bacon in a frying pan.  Over the years, I’ve had a number of burns on my hands and arms from hot splattering grease.  Ouch!!

Enter my friend, Colleen.  Colleen was familiar to cooking for a group of people.  She also had a lake house in central Wisconsin, where she would frequently entertain friends and family.  Luckily, our family was invited for weekend visits for a couple of years, and she shared with me her bacon secret.  It was the way her mother always did it.

Just get a plain ol’ baking sheet (mine’s a half-sheet pan).  Line it with aluminum foil and spray the foil with any cooking spray – keeps the bacon from sticking and sure helps with clean up!  Lay the bacon strips on the foil.  Place in a 375-400 degree oven.  And bake for 10 minutes or so.

Halfway done!  Remove the baking sheet from the oven, and turn over the lovely brown rashers.  Back in the oven for another 10 minutes or so, until you get the degree of crispness you desire.  See how nice and flat the strips remain?  They’re perfect for BLT’s or hamburgers, too.

Remove the bacon from the baking sheet to a plate lined with paper towels, and serve. My husband and I like our bacon pretty crispy.  If you like yours less well done, just keep an eye on it as it bakes.  The bacon should cook the same way it would in a pan without the burns – YEAH!

I bake one sheet at a time, which will hold about 1/2 pound of bacon.  If you want to make up the whole pound, use a couple of baking sheets.  If you save bacon grease, you can crimp the foil to make a spout, and pour it into a storage rec

Why it had not occurred to me before then to bake bacon strips in the oven, I will never know.  But then, that wasn’t the way my mother did it.