"Sun" dried tomatoes (made in the oven)

I love sun-dried tomatoes.  I love them on pizza, in pasta, on bread.  However, they are very pricy to purchase at the store so several years ago I started making my own sun-dried tomatoes.  The problem is that if you truly try to dry them in the sun you have to deal with bugs...yuck.  So drying them in the oven keeps things more sanitary and I believe yields the same taste. 

 I have found that the most important thing is to pick the right breed of tomato.  While any tomato can be used, the typical tomato used (and the type that is used in store bought varieties of sun dried tomatoes packed in olive oil) is the Roma or Amish paste.  I have always grown Roma tomatoes but this year tried the Amish Paste tomato as well.  Below you see a mix of the two varieties, very similar in look but the Romas are more perfectly cylindrical.

The main difference that I have found is what is inside when you slice open the Amish Paste.  There is very little tomato pulp or wetness as compared to the Roma...why is this a big deal?  Because the less moisture there is the more quickly the tomato will dry out for you.  Also, I really like these tomatoes for making pasta sauce as it dramatically reduces the time it takes to reduce the sauce from watery to pulpy.

So after washing and slicing I laid all of the tomatoes on a baking rack (the kind you cool cookies on) and then placed it on a cookie sheet.  In hindsight I probably would not use the baking rack as for some reason it seemed to take longer for the tomatoes to dry out when they were not directly touching the pan.

I put the tomatoes in the oven at 200 degrees overnight and at about the 15 hour mark (after turning them over once) I had "sun" dried tomatoes!