Most recipes that tout the title “oven fried chicken” require that the chicken either be flash fried (fried quickly to crisp up) and then be finished off in the oven. Or, the recipe calls for the pan in which the chicken will be cooked, to be very hot with oil so that when the chicken is added, it starts to sizzle and get brown.
Both of the methods described above work very well but sometimes I just like to make my work a little easier. Relying on science and the raised pH balance that baking soda brings to any mixture to which it is added, it seemed like a no-brainer when it came to adding it to the flour I was going use to coat the chicken. Cornstarch (aka corn flour) is also an excellent ingredient with which to coat items that you want to crisp up when frying, so instead of an all-wheat flour breading, I opted to mix cornstarch with the flour. The final and most important ingredient to this combination was time. Yes, you read that right, time. It was important that the chicken air-dry for an extended period of time so that the coating could adhere in such a way that it becomes a part of the outer layer of the chicken.
Finally, cooking the chicken on a rack inserted into a sheet pan allows the hot air to circulate around the meat cooking it evenly. For my
