Raw flour dangerous to eat?

I'm going to contact my food safety guru at Kansas State University for more information. You need to be careful heating flour because it's also combustible. Much of today's grains, seeds, nuts, spices, etc., are irradiated or pasteurized for the purpose of controlling microorganisms such as E. coli and other foodborne pathogens. I do know Wheat Montana wheat is NOT irradiated or pasteurized, and that information is probably not mandated on labeling, so it's going to be impossible to know for sure. The question will be at what temperature and for how long will it take to pasteurize?

-Grainlady

I would think microwaving for 1-2 minutes getting above 160 should do the trick? Do any commercial flours label 'heat treated?". When we 'flour' the surface for bread baking, the non-wet flour goes along with the cooking process and comes out still raw tasting flour. Hmm.
(...and why i use a cracked grain instead. do not like the raw flour taste on my bread)

Just guessing. Will be interesting to hear what the experts think. I don't like raw cookie dough, never have. Nestle heat treats their flour now after realizing their TollHouse fridge dough is very often purchased to eat raw. (gross)

This post was edited by sleevendog on Tue, Jun 11, 13 at 8:52

After posting here, I looked around on the internet and a few people did suggest microwaving, stirring frequently to keep from browning and testing the temp to above 160F. But I couldn't find any gov't sites, just bloggers and I'm curious what food experts say. Thanks for your replies and I appreciate your help, Grainlady. Wait to hear what your expert says.

Here's the information I received via e-mail from K-State:

Flour is a very low risk food on its own as far a bacteria is concerned. So there is no reason to heat treat it or pasteurize it.

The concern is when it is mixed with other ingredients such as to make cookie dough or [homemade] play-doh. In cookie dough there are raw eggs which are much more of a foodborne illness concern if raw cookie dough is eaten. With the play-doh, once it is handle by dirty hands or put on dirty surfaces, that is where contamination comes from.

So the flour is not the problem. Flour is not pasteurized or irradiated from any mill. If it were irradiated, it would have a statement saying so and/or a Radura symbol that indicated it was irradiated. If it were pasteurized, it would also be stated on the label.

So I do not have recommendations to treat flour.

-Grainlady

Here is a link that might be useful: K-State Rapid Response Center

Thanks, Grainlady, I appreciate you checking on it.

It's still confusing because the raw cookie dough illness from Nestle refrigerated dough wasn't caused by eggs because they were pasteurized and the only thing that wasn't heated in the dough was the flour (and the choc chips), so now Nestle heat treats the flour to make sure it is safe to eat raw. Hmmm. Still makes me a little nervous, so guess I'll just find a different recipe.

Here is a link that might be useful: cookie dough illness

Grainlady, my friend at the Michigan State University extension service agrees, flour is a "extremely" low risk food and there are no recommendations that she is aware of to treat it in any way.

My only issue with uncooked flour would be the taste, I don't care for the "uncooked flour" taste in some gravies and sauces if they are not cooked long enough, and that's why I don't really like raw cookie dough or cake batter.

As I understand it, the illness from the cookie dough was caused by e.coli, which is generally associated with feces or contaminants unlike salmonella, which is linked to raw eggs, among other things. The FDA did find e.coli in samples of the recalled dough, although it was a different strain than that found by testing the people who became ill. The response from Nestle was to shut down the line, do an "investigation", clean the line, obtain fresh ingredients and immediately proceed to make new cookie dough, which did not make anyone ill (apparently). It appears that the culprit was contamination in the equipment, from the workers, or in the ingredients, not an ongoing problem with any particular food substance.

So if you like raw flour, I think you're pretty safe eating it but if it makes you uncomfortable I certainly wouldn't do it.

Annie

I'm with Annie about floury flavors. Pale thick gravies and gluey chowders. NewOrlean style gumbo caramel roux is more my style. Never understood the cookie dough obsession. I get a stomach ache just thinking about it.

I'm always overly cautious with pot-luck party food. Often double batches not chilled enough or not as hot as should be. I tend to er on the safer side when making something for a crowd. My neighbor just had a book come out for her chocolate very impressive creations. (we get plenty of samples!). Her truffles are wonderful and she has a 'cookie dough' look-a-like but is cooked. (i don't have the book or recipe yet)
Must be something similar to what you want doing a search. Something cooked, then chilled, then formed...

Somewhere along the way from the manufacturer to the store shelves to your pantry, insects can get in and multiply.

That's what I found recently, a new pack of flour crawling inside with some very tiny bugs.

Although I don't think eating live bugs is harmful.

dcarch

This doesn't answer the safety question but at this very moment, there is a pint jar of cooked flour on my kitchen counter.

I put about a cup and a half of AP white flour in a frying pan and cook it over medium heat, whisking frequently, until it is a deep golden brown color. It takes a while.

Browned flour is an essential ingredient in PA Dutch kitchens. Mixed with water into a slurry, it adds a depth of color and flavor while thickening gravies, soups or stews. When added to melted butter, it becomes the base for white sauces without that raw flour taste that Annie mentioned.

Bacteria isn't the reason I make browned flour but it's not a difficult process.

Thanks everyone. Sleevendog, let me know the name of the cookbook; maybe I'll get buy it and use her recipe. I make truffle cake pops with oreos or thin mint cookies mixed with cream cheese, then rolled and dipped in chocolate. The mixture almost has the texture of raw dough.

I wonder if using an already baked sugar cookie with some butter and brown sugar whirled in along with the cream cheese might replicate the raw dough. Then stir in the choc chips... maybe I'll do some experimenting.

Yes, that is the idea to give the cookie dough texture. Maybe just make half-baked cookies, cool and cuisinart with crm cheese, then add the extras like choc chips to the ''batter'. Now that i might try! No raw taste.

Hey, that browned flour sounds swell ! I'm going to use that, thanks!

It'd be hard for me not to eat peanut butter cookie dough! On par with eating the cookies to me! I wonder on the illnesses just how much was caused by the end users hands, counters and the like. Sounds like a kneejerk reaction to blame the flour since it was the only thing they could think of. Did someone not wash their hands after using the bathroom? Sounds more likely than flour infecting them.

Thanks Grainlady and Annie1992 for checking on this.

Yesterday I bought some bleached A-P flour because that was all I saw on the shelf at Bristol Farms. I wanted bread flour, but they did not have any, and normally I buy unbleached flour. However, I needed flour, and so I bought it.

First I checked the expiration date on the package, and while I was looking for that, I found this notice:

"SAFE HANDLING INSTRUCTIONS:
Raw flour is not ready-to-eat and must be thoroughly cooked before eating to prevent illness from bacteria. Do not eat or play with raw dough; wash hands, utensils, and surfaces after handling."

I don't remember seeing this message on other packages of flour, but I may have overlooked it. A few weeks ago when I was making rye bread, I tasted some of the rye flour to make sure it was still good, as I had moved it from the freezer to the refrigerator and then back to the freezer. I had already moved the flour to a different container, as I do with all flours, and I only keep the label and expiration date from the package on the container, which I attach with clear packing tape.

Is there a difference between white flour and rye, barley, or whole wheat flour? I don't make a habit of eating raw flour, but I did not know that I was not supposed to play with raw dough🤯. I do wash everything to remove traces of flour, but that's just because I don't want to leave the surfaces with flour on them.

Bleached white flour is as close to dead as flour gets. There have been some bacteria scares traced to ADM and other big time agribusiness, mostly. I wouldn't be surprised if it were an artifact of bigitude, with the bacteria getting in at the factory level.

industrial milling—and even home milling if it's fast enough, can heat the grain enough to kill almost all of the microbes, and bleaching also isn't great for life.

Rye flour, even refined, is known for the quantity of micro organisms, including the yeast and lactobassilis (sp??) required for sourdough, and plenty of others.

Any whole grain is going to have a lot of microbes, unless it got pasteurization hot. Most are good to harmless, and may even quell a slight introduction of something really bad, like e. coli. I screwed up my system just licking my finger while feeding fresh milled whole wheat to my starter. Not illness, just introduction of unwelcome bacteria that made themselves at home and messed with me.

I would smell rather than taste the whole grain (or white) flour. Easy enough to smell if it's rancid. OTOH, I have no qualms tasting batter or dough made with white flour (bleached or not), even with eggs. Contamination with bad bacteria is exceedingly rare.

I did smell the rye flour, and it smelled okay, but I thought that tasting it might be more accurate.

Lars, that was my original question because I'd read against eating raw flour - I don't think it was limited to just white flour. It was because of ecoli in the product (I since have read elsewhere to not eat raw flour, so I don't). I suspect the ecoli gets into the flour in the mills, or even from the harvest fields. I know they (FDA) allow a certain # of impurities in our food. I would imagine that feces from vermin in both the fields and the processing plants (how could you ever keep mice and rats from getting into a large facility) end up in our food. Or who knows. Here is a more recent report from the CDC, showing that people DID become ill from eating raw flour.

https://www.cdc.gov/ecoli/2019/flour-05-19/index.html

Here is info on another, earlier problem:

https://www.fda.gov/food/outbreaks-foodborne-illness/fda-investigated-multistate-outbreak-shiga-toxin-producing-e-coli-infections-linked-flour

eta: one more to read:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6395439/

It's long and scientific, but:

Conclusion

In conclusion, findings of the present work further confirmed that EHEC and Salmonella
could survive for extended periods in wheat flour stored at typical
conditions used at home and commercial settings. Heat treatment is an
effective method for mitigating risk of EHEC in flour but is more
limited in case of Salmonella. On the other hand, storing
produced flour at slightly high temperatures (35°C) for a minimum period
of 2 months before distribution can be an effective substitute strategy
affecting both EHEC and Salmonella. Results from this study
further improve our knowledge regarding risk assessment and management,
such as predicting thermal process lethality of EHEC and Salmonella in flour.

Certainly, you're right. But if you want to be particularly careful, you likely can do well enough just smelling it, unless you have a poor sniffer. If you have a strong constitution, your gut bacteria should fight off whatever your stomach acid doesn't annihilate.

I do not have a poor sniffer, although Kevin does. I can smell many things that he cannot, including a lot of flowers. Our brother Mike is also sensitive to smells, like I am.

I tasted such a small amount of the rye flour that I think I was able to tell more by smelling it.

I remember eating cake batter as a child and raw bread dough, and neither of those seemed to bother me, that I can remember. I still taste small amounts of raw bread to check for flavor. I know it tastes completely different after being baked, but I like to check the salt and sugar balance.

There have been e-coli outbreaks where the CDC traced the source to raw flour. For instance there was one in 2016 and one in 2019:

https://www.cdc.gov/ecoli/2019/flour-05-19/index.html

Note: "outbreak" in these cases doesn't cover a huge number of cases. In the 2019 one, there were 21 cases in 9 states with 3 hospitalizations. King Arthur ended up recalling a lot of flour - the CDC site lists a small number of lots, but we got notices from King Arthur covering a lot of additional lots.

Bacterial load is important. One e coli cell isn't likely to make you sick. Getting an infection (at least for those with normal immune systems) generally requires enough of the organism to get past your immune defenses and start multiplying. So, I don't worry about tasting a bit of a batter or dough right when I'm mixing it up to check that it tastes right or even about eating the last bit in the bowl.

On the other hand, if I was going to make cookie dough to eat raw, I'd heat treat the flour that goes into it. Eating a larger quantity or something that has been mixed up and stored so the bacteria has a chance to multiply would be too much of a risk for me. Also, I am careful to clean the counters after using raw flour so it isn't sitting around to cross contaminate foods.

The CDC says not to even taste raw dough:
https://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/communication/no-raw-dough.html
but they also say not to eat sashimi and sushi with raw fish.

The CDC has to worry about "but the government said it was okay". :) At least the freeze the fish first to kill the parasites.

Excellently said, Cloud Swift!

Wouldn't you get awful indigestion from eating a lot of raw flour?

Americans are known for eating raw cookie dough. Packages of ready to bake cookie dough have big warnings not to eat it raw, nowadays, because of the potential of contaminated eggs or flour. That doesn't stop people from eating it raw. Every so often you hear about someone who got sick from it. The Toll House Cookie Expert (private name, not official) figures in how much raw dough (made by him) he's likely to eat in his yield.

When I was living in the college dorms, 10 girls per suite, our housekeeper (university employee who cleaned the bathroom and vacuumed while making sure the place stayed intact) gave us a roll of slice and bake cookie dough. There was a full kitchen, rarely used (though we did sometimes, and cleaned up after ourselves) for the whole building. The four girls who were there to receive this special, unusual gift, did head to the kitchen, but instead of baking several dozen cookies for all of us, ate the whole package raw between them. They were led into temptation stronger than good manners and food safety could counter.

Nowadays, the stores also sell ready to eat, pasteurized cookie dough.

When I was young there was also a cold treat people made from butter, sugar and flour, which was its own thing, but always made me think it needed baking because then it would be a cookie.

🤯

It used to be something people were embarrassed to admit. Buying rolls of cookie dough but never baking them.

Never expected this. Opened a few years ago to lines around the block, 🙄

OMG!! I'd seen the ready to eat in the fridge at the market, but never imaging anything like that!! Of course, NY is the place for highly specialized stores...