In drying of foods, dielectric heating is usually combined with conventional heating. It may be used to preheat the feed to a hot-air drier. By raising the temperature of the feed quickly and causing moisture to move to the surface, it can decrease the overall drying time. Dielectric heating may be applied part-way through the drying cycle, when the food enters the falling rate period. This can boost the rate of drying. If dielectric heating is applied near the end of hot-air drying it can also shorten the drying time significantly and hence increase the throughput of the drier. It is more usual to use dielectric heating in the later stages of drying. One of the major applications of RF heating is in the postbaking of biscuits. The objectives in baking biscuits are to produce a product of the right size, shape, color, and moisture content. In a conventional oven, reducing the moisture content to the desired level can take up a large part of the total baking time. The application of RF heating can shorten the baking time. The oven is set to produce biscuits of the right size, shape, and color, but the RF heating is used to remove the remaining moisture, without excessive heating of the already dry sections of the biscuit. The capacity of an oven can be increased by more than 50% by the use of RF heating. Postbaking by RF heating has also been applied to breakfast cereals and cereal-based baby foods.