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Raw Flour: A Potential Hazard in Your Restaurant

Recent recalls of flour are important to note, but a recall is not the only time to be concerned about the safety of raw flour. Always handle uncooked flour carefully.

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Updated:

August 25, 2025

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In recent years, there have been numerous recalls and illnesses associated with raw flour and products containing raw flour, like boxed cake mix. While it is appropriate to be concerned about getting sick from those batches of recalled flour, that concern should apply to all brands and types of raw flour, regardless of a recall.

Why Be Concerned?

Flour is a raw agricultural commodity. Wheat is grown outside in a field where birds and other animals fly over and wander through the field, which can introduce contaminants. The wheat is then harvested, taken to a mill, and ground into powder. There is no treatment step to kill biological contaminants, like E.coli, in the factory. Those bacteria that cause food-borne illness are killed by cooking, baking, or frying food. Symptoms of E.coli infection can include stomach cramps, bloody diarrhea, and vomiting. Severe infections lead to kidney damage.

Efforts are in place to reduce the risk of contamination; however, due to the nature of the flour production process, bacterial hazards are always a concern. Flour has been implicated in many food-borne illness outbreaks. For this reason, many manufacturers of flour and products containing raw flour, like cake and brownie mixes, include a warning on the package to not consume raw dough or batter.

Beware of Cross Contamination

Cross contamination occurs when contaminants are accidentally transferred from one surface to another. When preparing food that contains raw flour, be sure to wash your hands, countertops, and mixing bowls thoroughly by following your establishment's protocol for washing, rinsing, sanitizing, and air-drying. Examples of cross contamination include placing raw cookie dough onto a baking sheet and not washing your hands before handling baked cookies or using a measuring cup to measure flour, then using the same cup to measure sugar, thereby contaminating the rest of the sugar in the container, which is a ready-to-eat food.

Cross contamination of raw flour can happen in lots of places--not just a bakery. Consider the flow of food in a pizza restaurant. If a food handler is making pizza (handling raw dough) and uses his flour-covered hand to pick up onions to top the pizza, then another employee uses onions from the same container for a sandwich (a ready-to-eat food), the raw onions have been potentially contaminated without a cooking step to destroy harmful microorganisms! What if the employee touches the handle of the pizza peel with a flour-covered hand when placing the pie in the oven, then the same peel is used to remove the pizza from the oven? That food handler's hands are now contaminated and could contaminate other surfaces or food. Additionally, the peel used to place the pizza in the oven could be contaminated with raw flour, which then contaminates the cooked pizza. Another example of cross contamination in this type of restaurant is if a food handler makes a pizza and has raw flour on his hands, does not wash his hands, and then puts on single-use gloves before preparing ready-to-eat food, like a salad or sandwich.

Prevent Cross Contamination

An easy way to prevent cross contamination is to separate raw from ready-to-eat food, ingredients, and the utensils used to handle them. These same principles can be applied to any retail establishment--not just a pizza restaurant. For example:

Keep separate containers of ingredients: one for the pizza area where the ingredients will be cooked (to eliminate harmful bacteria), and a separate container for ready-to-eat foods, like sandwiches and salads.
Use one pizza peel to put the pizza in the oven and a second, clean one to remove the pizza.
Wash, rinse, sanitize, and air-dry all utensils and prep surfaces before and after prepping food, especially food that contains raw flour, meat, poultry, eggs, and fish.

As always, wash your hands before handling food, after handling unclean surfaces (boxes, broom, money, etc.), and after handling contaminated ingredients (raw meat, uncooked flour, etc.). Use warm water and soap, and scrub for at least 20 seconds. Dry hands with a single-use towel. Use the towel to turn off the water.

If you have any recalled flour in your restaurant, the FDA recommends that you discard it. That said, if you already used some of the recalled flour, as long as the product was thoroughly cooked or baked, and you handled the raw ingredients appropriately, there is little need for concern. Always handle raw flour as though it is contaminated, similar to how you would handle raw meat.