You might want to try doing 1/4" slices that are dipped in lemon juice or citric acid to help prevent browning during drying.

Maybe try using jelly roll trays or sheets if you are pulping your bananas. They far meant for this purpose. Make sure you flip your banana leather as it dries too, that helps. Some people use wax paper for leathers too, but I have never done so, so I don't know how well that works or not.

If you like, and are using the resulting dehydrated product in cooking rather than snacking.. and you have the freezer space.. you can freeze up a bunch of those nanners and keep them for a while before you dehydrate them. This could potentially help you with the time crunch of dehydration time vs how long good bananas last. I've never done this either, but have read of others doing so.

Agree that if you want to make leathers from pulp you need the special plastic sheets for them. Otherwise a light spray coating of PAM or similar cooking spray on the racks helps avoid sticking. One reason why I prefer the plastic trays over the SS ones - much less sticking. I also find it helps to stir/flip the chips about half way through to prevent sticking.

Dave

To clarify i did use lemon juice bath as per excalibur instructions and i have the plastic mesh screens but the bananas even stuck to those. Not quite as bad. The stainless steel trays of bananas were trashed. I soaked the bananas off scrubbed and put away. I'm not sure what they will be good for if the food sticks so badly.

Now the puree I put some on the fruit leather trays I bought and they peeled off nicely but I tried parchment paper because the book said you could use it and two different fruits it stuck and had to be trashed. I want to get this right before I start harvesting my garden. Last year I did tomatoes and zucchini but it was a different dehydrator. I just have to get the kinks worked out with this. The leather tasted awesome BTW. It was pumpkins squash banana cinnamon.

That's my language. I think I waited too long but I learned a hard lesson. I hate wasting food and time so I will remember this time. Problem is trying to plant pot up plants and dehydrating all in the same day. Lol. It gets busier from here right?

But the solution for all is the cooking oil spray coating. it is routine in out house.

I don't even want to ask what for!!!! LOL

OOPS! Good catch Jack. :-) Guess I could say we use it to spray the mud dobber nests that always crop up in the out house.

Dave

PS: yeah it only gets busier from here on out. Can only hope the back and legs hold up.

Sorry I couldn't resist!

Just don't spray it on the seat or someone with a skinny backside might slide right in :)

Too funny.

I did figure out that they weren't dry enough. I let some go until crispy and they came right off the plastic sheets.

Ha-ha! Yall're making me laugh!

I tried something different last fall making autumn olive (autumnberry) fruit leather. I lightly oiled Corelle brand dinner plates and poured my pulp onto those for oven drying. I was able to pull whole round sheets off of the plates. But it took some experimentation. Too moist and it was too fragile. Too dry and it would stick anyway.

Matthias lang: Thanks for the Correlle dinner plate idea. I have lots of them and use them in the oven frequently. But I never thought of using them to dry fruit leathers. It seems like too much bother to drag out the dehydrator for just a small amount of fruit puree so I usually end up using it some other way. I'm going to try popping it into a plate and putting it into the oven after cooking other foods and see if the residual heat is enough to do much. If not, I'll try leaving the oven light on to add just a bit of warmth. I'm looking forward to trying this.

Run warm water over parchment side of fruit leather. Place warm, damp dishtowel over parchment for a minute or two. Should peel off easily. Place leather back on tray in dehydrator, turned off, and let sit until no longer moist. Works for me.