Just how hygienic is cake-baking as it appears on tv ...?

unless those wooden dowels and plastic tubing are dipped in sewage before putting in the cake, they really don't hole bacteria.

I work at a bakery and the cakes are all handled with bare hands here too. Washed bare hands but bare hands. Its hard to wear those food safety gloves and still have great manual dexterity.

The cakes that are out are generally crumb frosted which serves to seal in moisture and a cake does not spoil quickly at all. The most that will happen to it is it will dry out eventually.

As I have never heard of anyone getting sick from a frosted cake from a bakery, there are probably scientific reasons why it does not pose as great a danger as with other foods.

Sugar is considered a preservative, just like salt is so those things(cakes and frostings ) don't "spoil" like meat would and actually present a hostile environment for many bacteria.

Winston is absolutely right. I worked at a hospital kitchen and we had a dietitian who hated gloves because she said it gave a worker a false sense of cleanliness and if you observe people wearing them, they touch EVERYTHING with them and then go back to food where a person without takes care not to do that. Nothing beats a freshly washed clean pair of hands.

And ditto on the "sanitizers". Thats just BS too. It lasts for just nano seconds and if you read the instructions on the bottle, it is to be used on clean hands so whats the point?

I nevertheless bake, yet not in such parts as I used to. I make my own Christmas cake, brownies, biscuits, pies etc. I additionally make all my own jam, marmalade and lemon curd. as a results of fact there is basically the two one human beings at abode now I even tend to make small brownies and freeze some or make a huge sultana cake which will shop for properly over a week in a robust hermetic field. I bear in mind some years in the past, while my infants have been nevertheless at abode, I constantly did a batch baking on a Friday. All their acquaintances could be at my kitchen door waiting to get a share. I bear in mind the jam truffles have been a particular regular.

Wearing gloves while handling food is not more sanitary than handling food bare hand while regularly washing your hands. It has a comforting effect on people by creating the impression of cleanliness. A study done by University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center comparing bacterial levels on foods handled with gloves and bare hands showed significantly higher bacterial levels in foods prepared with gloves. It is speculated that bare hand workers tend to wash their hands more often and more thoroughly while gloved workers tend to use the same pair of gloves for extended periods of time without washing or changing them.

Well, the cakes are even pre-baked, so all the bacteria that gets into it in the decorating process doesn't get killed. Also, I see them wipe their hair out of their eyes all the time, and they don't stop to wash their hands. I'm never getting a cake out of a catalog.

Actually, I'm pretty sure we just see the preparation of the cake. The cake that is actually made/eaten is probably made behind the scenes.