Hi Danielle,
I had the same questions when I began dehydrating fruit not too long ago. I’ve dehydrated many kinds of fruit for backpacking trips. Based on my experience dehydrating pineapple, bagging it, and storing the bagged pineapple in the freezer for 6 + months I’ve found:
• I like to dry the pieces so that there is no moisture inside the piece of fruit. I slice the pineapple thinner now. No more than a 1/4 of an inch. The thinner, the quicker the pieces dry. The problem I had with some of the thicker pieces (1/2 an inch) was the outside would dry but the inside still had a little moisture. Drying the larger piece longer never got rid of the moisture inside. I would still eat these pieces that had some moisture inside as long as they hadn’t been hanging around too long out of the fridge.
• I allow the fruit to come to room temperature before bagging it. Otherwise moisture will accumulate inside the bag.
• I put 4 days’ worth of pineapple slices in a ½ zip lock baggie. I don’t close the zip lock though. Then I place the unzipped bagged pineapple in a vacuum seal bag and vacuum seal it. I guess I was a little paranoid.
• All the bags of pineapple were dated and I stored them in the freezer until I needed them. Once I received the double bagged pineapple on the trail, I’d cut open and throw away the vacuum sealed bag.
Please feel free to e-mail me if you have any questions.
Have you read the Dry It, You’ll Like It book by Gen MacManiman? Great book!
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_Gottago_
