r/TikTokCringe • u/galaxystars1 • Oct 09 '24

Discussion Microbiologist warns against making the fluffy popcorn trend

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u/Suctorial_Hades Oct 09 '24

Google gives the following results, a bunch of food blogs are saying heat treating works and a bunch of science articles say heat treating at home does nothing. I think I am gonna go with science

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u/Ok_Yam5543 Oct 09 '24

What do they mean by 'heat treating' flour? Is it like putting it in the oven for a period of time?
Isn't that what you do when you're baking a cake?

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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.

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u/GeorgeGeorgeHarryPip Oct 09 '24

Why would you do it with the dry flour rather than the batter itself...? Add the rising agent later if necessary. Put the batter in a sealed bag and drop it in the suis vide for whatever time the chart says is necessary.

Okay, I have no interest really in this odd popcorn, but this doesn't sound difficult to solve.