How to make a tasty and useful bacon weave

Bacon seems to be everywhere these days. It's almost as popular on the Internet as cats and Kardashians, and why not?  It's hard to think of a dish that can't be improved by the addition of some bacon but for the true bacon lover some bacon is just never enough. That's where the bacon weave comes in, whether you want to wrap a whole chicken in bacon, make a bacon bowl, serve up some appetizers on crispy bacon weave squares or whip up a legendary bacon fatty, you're going to need to start with an easy and fun to make bacon weave.

To start with you're going to have to think about how big a weave, do you need a full bacon strip or will a half strip do?  If you're making small weaves for appetizers or side dishes you'll need to cut you bacon down to size.  The smallest practical size for a weave is 3 bacon strips width wide by  3 bacon strips width long.  for the purpose of this demonstration I'm going to use full length bacon strips, because I'm going to use this weave to make a bacon fatty, something we'll be discussing further in a future article.
For the full sized weave I'm going to demonstrate you'll need about a pound and half of bacon, and a cutting board that's at least a bacon strip long and wide.
Start by laying a bacon strip along one edge of the cutting board then place the bacon strips at a 90 degree right angle to the first strip as shown below.

Now fold back every second strip and lay the piece you used to measure across the ends of the unfolded pieces then unfold the folded slices back over the strip you just laid across.

Now fold the pieces that are under your first cross piece over top of it and lay your second piece over top the unfolded strips.

Now repeat the process, alternating which strips you fold back until you've completed your weave.

Now you've completed your weave you'll need to cook it, if you're wrapping something in it just add a few minutes to the cook time of whatever you're making, if you're crisping it up for appetizers bake at 425 degrees for 15-20 minutes, until it looks crisp.  If you're making a bacon bowl form your weave over a bowl made from a heat safe material and follow the baking instructions.