Annie, just a dorky ( Chef) opinion from me, but sometimes the mechanics of a certain preparation make a difference.

Use the same recipe that you posted, but bake the flour/spice coated wings WITHOUT the hot sauce mixture. You can baste the wings with any fat that renders during baking to make them crispy/brown. Once the wings are cooked/crispy, pour off the pan drippings and run the wings thru the hot sauce dip and return them to the oven just long enough to see the drippings sizzle/brown on the foil coated pan.

For ME , the joy of Hot Wings is that the cayenne- pepper/heat is right up/OUT front on the OUTSIDE of the wings, you get the Cayenne sting on lips and your eyes water, nose runs, and then the sweet juicy chicken inside rounds out the flavor experience. Each wing is a "start over" experience.

When you dip the wings in Hot Sauce before baking, a couple things happen. The chicken fat inherent IN the wings renders OUT, which means that the cayenne flavor you wanted ON the OUTSIDE of the wings is now pooled in the bottom of the pan as "drippings" instead of where you wanted it to stay.

I'm laughing at myself trying to describe this, it probably makes NO sense at all.

Bake them with the dry coating Only. You will see fat in the pan. Baste with that fat to crispy/cooked or turn the wings to coat with that fat. When you are happy with crispy/cooked, pour the pan drippings into a stainless steel bowl, dump in the Franks HOT Sauce at your pleasure ( with no extra butter or fat) coat the wings with that mixture and then return them to a hot hot oven to sizzle the coating.

There isn't a short way to go from deep-fry to oven-style, with the same result, and I'm still LOL that I'm trying .

Laughs are on me, Alton Brown gets paid a ton to explain this stuff, and he gets laughed at, too.

Breeze


Whew.