LEAF WRAPPED TEMPE VERSUS PLASTIC WRAPPED TEMPE

I am not sure if you have noticed that there is a world of difference in quality of tempe packed in paper and banana leaves compared to tempe packed in plastics?

Tempe packed in leaves wrapping are more flavourful, less compact or dense in the tempe matrix and it is drier.

Tempe packed in plastic are dense and the beans look not properly broken down by the fungi. Worst, they dont really taste like tempe but taste like hard dry soya beans

From the above clues we could argue that in plastic wrapped tempe the following are observed:
1 Higher water detected because of condensation produced by the fungi respiration which could not escaped effectively compared to leaf wrapped tempe
2 Higher water and temperature due to higher metabolism and poor heat transfer from the tempe resulted in very rapid growth of the fungal hyphae or mycelia. This will probably resulted in greated compaction of the hyphal between the beans. The tighter wrapping by the plastic also contribute to the compaction