hok382@houxa.UUCP (P.CARSTENSEN) (03/06/84)
My mother dries fruit in her electric oven (from an n of about 2 we have deduced that it just doesn't work in a gas oven). She just turns the heat to 150 and opens the door periodically to let out steam and wipe moisture off the inside of the door (twice a day ~ periodically). When my parents have the wood stove working, she dries fruit about half way in the oven and then puts it on trays on the wood stove to finish. I think she has been experimenting with using a convection oven and that cuts the time by a factor of three or so (She got tired of waiting for my brother to build her a drier.) Incidentally, one of her most successful products is fruit leather: you put plums, peaches, apricots, or whatever in a blender and make slush of the fruit, add some sugar for stuff like plums with bitter skins, and dump the stuff on a cookie sheet (enough to fill about 1/2 - 3/4 ") and dry. She also dries apricots, apples, pears, and bananas.