Raw Flour and Dough: Why Tasting It Can Make You Sick

At a glance

• Raw flour and raw eggs can carry germs that make you sick.
• Tasting unbaked dough or batter can give you food poisoning.
• Bake or cook as the recipe or package says.
• Wash hands, bowls, utensils and counters after handling raw flour, eggs or dough.

Most flour is raw

Flour doesn't look like a raw food, but most of it is — it hasn't been treated to kill food-poisoning germs such as E. coli and Salmonella.

• How it gets in: germs can contaminate grain in the field or flour as it's made.
• What doesn't help: grinding grain and bleaching flour don't kill them, so they can end up in store-bought flour and baking mixes.
• What does: only baking or cooking. Eat unbaked dough or batter made with contaminated flour, and you can get sick.

Raw eggs, too

Raw and lightly cooked eggs can carry Salmonella — another reason dough and batter can make you or your family sick.

Throw out recalled flour

CDC has investigated outbreaks tied to raw flour or cake mix in 2016, 2019, 2021 and 2023, and some led to recalls. Flour and baking mixes keep a long time, so check your pantry against the FDA's recall list and throw away anything recalled.

Safer choices

Some stores sell edible cookie dough and brownie batter, made with heat-treated flour and pasteurized eggs or no eggs. Read the label to be sure it's meant to be eaten without baking.

Don't

• Eat raw dough or batter — for cookies, brownies, cakes, pie crusts, tortillas, pizza, biscuits or pancakes — or raw-flour crafts like homemade play dough and holiday ornaments.
• Let children play with or eat dough made with raw flour, craft dough included.
• Put raw dough or mix in milkshakes or ice cream — no homemade cookie dough in ice cream, no cake mix in milkshakes. Store-bought cookie dough ice cream uses dough treated to kill germs.

Do

• Bake dough and batter before eating, at the temperature and for the time the recipe or package gives.
• Refrigerate products with raw dough or eggs, such as store-bought cookie dough, as the label says, until baked or cooked.
• Keep raw foods apart from ready-to-eat foods. Flour is a powder, so it spreads easily.
• Clean up: wash your hands with soap and water after touching flour, raw eggs or anything they touched, and wash bowls, utensils and counters in hot, soapy water.

A real story: Harlee's Story: E. coli Illness Linked to Cake Batter — one family's experience, and how to prevent it.

Sources

Based on "Raw Flour and Dough," CDC Food Safety, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; a work of the United States government in the public domain. A family photograph from Harlee's story is not reproduced.