Remember that if trays with metal bottoms are used for drying, they should be covered with cheesecloth to prevent acid action.  Oven racks may be covered with either cheesecloth or heavy wrapping paper.

The interval between stirring varies with the type of drier used, with the condition of the fruit and with the degree of heat maintained.  Make the first stirring within two hours after the drying is begun.  After that examine the product from time to time and stir often enough to prevent scorching or sticking and to insure uniform drying.  Use a wooden paddle for stirring.  Where several trays or racks are placed one above the other, it is necessary to shift the trays from time to time, so the upper tray goes to the bottom and the bottom tray to the top.

The time necessary for drying fruit depends upon several factors:  The type and construction of the drier; the depth to which the fruit is spread; the method of preparing, whether sliced, quartered or whole; the temperature maintained; and weather conditions, whether bright and sunny or cloudy and damp.

If the atmosphere is heavy and damp the drying is retarded.  Under some conditions it is hardly possible thoroughly to dry fruit.

There is possibly no step in the entire drying process that requires better-trained judgment than the matter of knowing when the fruit is sufficiently dried.  A little experience will soon teach this.

The fruit should be so dry that when a handful of slices is pressed together firmly into a ball the slices will be “springy” enough to separate at once upon being released from the hand.  No fruit should have any visible moisture on the surface.  As the dried apples, pears, peaches and apricots are handled they should feel soft and velvety to the touch and have a pliable texture.  You do not want fruit so dry that it will rattle.  If fruits are brittle you have dried them too much.

After the apples and all other fruits are dried they must go through another process, called “conditioning.”  The best way to “condition” fruits is to place them in boxes or cans and pour them from one container into another once a day for three or four successive days.  By doing this you mix the fruit thoroughly and give to the whole mass an even degree of moisture.  Pieces that are too dry will absorb moisture from those that are too moist.

You may lose a whole bag or jar of dried products if you neglect the conditioning, for if one moist piece goes into that bag all is lost.  Moisture breeds mold and mold means decay.

Ask yourself these questions:  “Do I ever lose any dried products?  Are my dried products when soaked and cooked as near like the original fruit as possible?” If you lose products and if your dried fruits are tasteless you had better start the conditioning process.  For with this one step added to your drying you need lose no dried products, and you need not dry the fruits to the brittle stage, as you must of necessity do when you put them away immediately.