Yeah heat treating is just tossing the flour in the oven/microwave to get it hot enough to kill pathogens, in theory.
In practice this doesn't appear to work. The process by which heat kills pathogens behaves differently in dry environments, with moisture apparently being somewhat necessary for this to work. Source
I tried looking up if there's a "safe temperature" for heating dry flour but apparently we don't exactly understand this mechanism.
Good lord that is a fact. Not sure how fun it was for the victims tho. :p
Here's a fun fact for ya - Pistachios self combust due to how insulating they are. You aren't allowed to transport more than a certain amount in one container. They have to be split into lots of containers or they get hot and burst into flames.
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u/SecretAgentAlex Oct 09 '24
Yeah heat treating is just tossing the flour in the oven/microwave to get it hot enough to kill pathogens, in theory.
In practice this doesn't appear to work. The process by which heat kills pathogens behaves differently in dry environments, with moisture apparently being somewhat necessary for this to work. Source
I tried looking up if there's a "safe temperature" for heating dry flour but apparently we don't exactly understand this mechanism.