The Bacon thread got me antsy, so I dug an antique pack of Side Pork from the freezer.
The pork had already been sliced, so that made it interesting. This was an experiment of the first order.
I wanted to make this a simple as possible, so I chose my Morton Smoke Flavored Sugar Cure. Yummm...

The pork was coated liberally with the dry curing mix. There are directions on the package for how to make a brine solution, but since the meat was sliced I took the easy route.

I didn't have any 1 gallon Ziploc bags, so I used a vacuum seal bag, and left a bit of air in it.

The package went in the refrigerator to cure for a week. Every day the pack got turned over so the juices would mix thoroughly. At the end of 7 days, I pulled the meat out and tied the slices together to finish the process. The meat was placed on a rack with some foil to catch the drippings. It went into the preheated oven at 225 degrees for 1 hour.
When the time was up, I pulled it out and patted off any excess fat with a paper towel.

After it cooled, there were salt deposits from the cure. The sliced meat was rinsed under cold tap water just to remove the excess. I pulled a couple slices from the center of the pack and fried 'em up. Looks like bacon, smells like bacon...yumm...BACO N! All together it took a week and a few cents worth of curing salt. Your price on side pork/pork belly may vary, but I'm betting it's less than packaged bacon.
Part of this experiment was to see if I could cure pre-sliced pork. Cutting slices off a whole slab of cured bacon is a PITA if you don't have a good electric meat slicer. Using this method, you could get your butcher to slice the thickness you want for your bacon, and then cure it at home.
If you like pepper bacon, cure the block of slices, separate them and then lay them flat for the oven curing. I'd cut the time to about 30-40 minutes in that case, though. But that's just a guess.
