Exfoliants - anyone use corn meal or chopped rice or other grains?

[RogueRose]

I just tried some oats but got a lot of flour with it, I'll sift and see what happens. While eating an english muffin the bottom had corn meal and it has a nice texture. I was wondering if anyone used this as exfoliant or possible some type of rice grindings or choppings.

 

[Muskette]

I use cornmeal in my Gardeners' Soap. It is very scrubby - too scrubby for a body soap, in my opinion.

 

[shunt2011]

Cornmeal is too scratchy for body soap in my experience. But there are those that like scratchy stuff. However, I use oats and pumice and poppy seeds as well as coffee (finely ground).

 

[Obsidian]

I've use amaranth grain before. Since they are round, they aren't scratchy but I'm not sure how well they exfoliate.

 

[IrishLass]

I make a kitchen soap with fine, ground pumice that works real well for us. For body soaps, I don't like anything extremely scratchy, so I use flaked baby oatmeal.

And I've lately been thinking of experimenting with some rice flour in a batch of facial soap. We'll see how that goes.


IrishLass

 

[fuzz-juzz]

I tried poppy seeds and oats.
I like both but prefer oats. If you sift and keep larger flakes it will work well.

 

[OferaliO]

I love to use baby oatmeal and coffee grinds... I just use the grinds right out of the basket after brewing a pot. I also really like parsley and orange peel as both exfoliants and colorants.

 

[OliveOil2]

I like using dead sea mud, baby oatmeal flakes, fine pumice, and ground azuki beans. The azuki beans leave nice specks of color in a natural uncolored base, or in a lighter color like pink clay.

 

[penelopejane]

I am currently using soap with coffee grounds in it. It was a gift. The grounds look pretty fine but it scratches my skin. Actually leaves red scratches!

 

[skayc1]

I use coconut flour in my soap recipe that I have coconut oil in. My lard recipe was made for someone allergic to coconut oil, so I do not add it to that. I wonder how rice flour would do?

 

[RogueRose]

I make a kitchen soap with fine, ground pumice that works real well for us. For body soaps, I don't like anything extremely scratchy, so I use flaked baby oatmeal.

And I've lately been thinking of experimenting with some rice flour in a batch of facial soap. We'll see how that goes.


IrishLass

I was going through my pantry and came across cream of rice. It has a really nice texture - a cross of flakey salt and oatmeal - so it is softer than salt but kind of has the feeling of salt and fine oatmeal flakes.

Another option is steel cut oats. I think the standard size is a little large so I put it in a mini food processor and chopped them a little more. It turned some into a coarse flour but the remaining pieces were about 1/4 the size of the original. I put it through 2 sifters, the larger first, which keeps anything larger than the desired size out of the mix - and then I use a finer sifter to take out the fine/coarse flour with anything remaining in the sifter as what is used. The bag in the middle has oats a little bit larger than poppy seeds and gives a bit more "scratchy" feel as it isn't round like poppy.

 

[dillsandwitch]

do you have to grind the poppy seeds or can you put them in whole? I was wanting to give them a go. I have only ever tried adding really fine coffee and I find that too scratchy to use as body soap. great on dirty hands though

 

[RogueRose]

do you have to grind the poppy seeds or can you put them in whole? I was wanting to give them a go. I have only ever tried adding really fine coffee and I find that too scratchy to use as body soap. great on dirty hands though

The poppy seeds I use I put in whole. I know they do vary in size from .25 mm to 3mm depending upon the specie so it might depend on what kind you get.