When food is left out unsealed why do crunchy thing go soft while soft things get hard?
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Crunchy things are crunchy because starches have formed hard bonds almost like crystals. The lack of water allows this.
Breads are spongy because they contain water to soften those bonds.
Because crackers are dry, they suck up extra water. This softens up the bonds.
The opposite happens for breads. They contain softer bonds with more water. The water escapes, causing a more cracker-like bond where the starches sort of crystalize. However, it happens in a less controled way, making it undesirable in most cases.
The air contains water. Crunchy Things have kess water in them than the air surrounding and therefore slowly take up the water becoming soft. For soft things it’s the opposite, they contain more water and slowly release it into the surrounding air, which makes them become hard.
If you leave something sitting out, it will gradually absorb or lose moisture until it reaches the same moisture content as the surrounding air.
So if you take something dry such as a cracker, it starts out less moist than the air, so it will absorb moisture from the air and get soft and soggy.
If you take something moist like a slice of cake, the air will such the moisture out of it and dry it until it reaches the same (dry) moisture content of the air.
So a soggy cracker and a dry slice of cake will actually be the same moisture content of you leave them out, just we expect one to be moist and one dry, so they both feel wrong.
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