Kitchen Tips: How to Bake Potatoes - as part of the expert series by GeoBeats. A good way to bake a potato is you want a hot oven, oh, 375 degrees or so. You want to put it in the middle rack and you figure it is going to take an hour to an hour and 15 minutes for a basic general sized potato like this. I have seen recipes where you cover it in foil. Not a good idea. If you cover that potato in foil, all that hot steam is going to stay inside that packet of foil and the skin will get very soft. And the potato will end up being steamed instead of getting nice and flaky, which is what you expect your baked potato to look like when it is finished. If you do red potatoes or little fingerling potatoes and you are going to boil them in your pot, then you definitely figure they are going to take, oh, could be 8, 10, 20 minutes before your knife will go inserted easily.