My guess is...you cooked your bacon in a dirty skillet. A dirty skillet will cause food to stick to it. Put some water in your skillet and boil it for 10 minutes.....this WILL NOT remove the pre-seasoning. The boiling water should help remove any food particles that are trapped in the rough grain particles on the bottom surface of your skillet. Pre-seasoning is tough and not easily removed....do not be overly concerned about removing it. You need very high temperatures (greater than 500 F) or oven cleaner to remove it.

Keep in mind that your skillet is only "pre"-seasoned....it is not cured and non-stick by a long shot. Keep using it, especially frying bacon in it, and it will get better with use.

When Lodge made your skillet they sprayed it with a proprietary oil formulation and heated it above the smoking point of that oil to get the pre-seasoning coating that is on your skillet. IMO it is much better than the wax coating they used to use.

Do not be concerned about the dark ring that you now see on you skillet. It is caused by the thermal cracking of the polymers in the pre-seasoning coating. In time your entire skillet will darken as it develops a true cure or patina.

Dan

Brown bits on the bottom of the pan when cooking bacon? Sorry for asking a stupid question, but were they not little bacon bits? That yummy "food debris" that you find in bacon grease and makes your eggs taste yummy when you cook them next?

The only thing I can think of that you might have done differently is rub it down with shortening or oil after it was clean and dry. I don't do this every time, but I did it regularly when my cast iron was newly seasoned and I still do it on occasion.

I don't think color variations in the seasoning are anything to worry about and will go away eventually as it becomes more seasoned.

Oh, and while I know that there are *very* strong opinions about this, I use soapy water on my cast iron to clean it and scrub with a nylon bun scrubbie. I don't put full strength soap on it, but I can't bear the idea of just rinsing it off (even though that's what my mom and g-mom did). Would my cast iron be even more well seasoned if I didn't do it? Maybe so, but it's darn near non-stick now, so I'll just live with it.