Correct, it was in fact uncured pork belly, not bacon. As for the “back fat”, to be honest I adapted this recipe from another which said the same so I left it but will remove it now. I also added notes about the salt and sodium nitrate.

I actually am a microbiologist so I appreciate you pointing out these things.

This indicates that you don’t really know anything about this subject and should not be presuming to teach anyone anything about it, especially given the food safety issues involved. There is no such thing as “uncured bacon” as bacon is, by definition, cured pork belly. Also…

1) I don’t know what the parenthetical “back fat” following “pork belly” in your ingredients list is supposed to be a reference to, but if it’s “fatback” then this is an error, as pork belly and fatback are two different things.

2) Cure ingredients (in this case just the salt, as everything else is just flavoring) should always be measured in terms of weight as a percentage of the weight of the meat being cured. This is because different types of salt have different grain shapes and sizes, and so do not measure consistently when using volumetric measurements. For bacon, salt is typically used in an amount somewhere around 2% of the weight of the pork belly, so for your recipe that would be about 0.5 oz of salt, which can be adjusted up or down a small amount per taste. But the amount used needs to be close to this for food safety.

3) While some prefer not to use it, Cure #1 (sodium nitrite) should be mentioned as an option for protection against botulinum (the organism that creates the toxin responsible for botulism). It also gives bacon its characteristic pink tint and flavor. It should be used at 0.25% the meat’s weight.