Triple rice soap

[Misschief]

I decided to add Mochiko sweet rice flour to my subscription order at Amazon. I will try it in soap and see if my skin does or does not find it to be exfoliating.

Misschief, when you made your triple rice soap, did you do HP like Dawni does, or did you do it CP like I did? I don't think it would really matter, but thought I'd ask. I have not noticed any difference using HP or CP when it comes to additives that my skin finds exfoliating. As I've said, colloidal oatmeal feels exfoliating to my skin, and it's pretty darn fine as I recall.

I do sometimes use rice powder in cooking, so it's not like this will go to waste if I do find it too rough on my skin.

I CP mine.

ETA Colloidal oatmeal is finer and softer than the rice flour I have. I use Aveeno brand colloidal oatmeal and it's as fine as talcum powder.

 

[Terri E]

Hi Terri, will you please share your inspiration behind using rice in your soap? Dawni mentioned above that using rice as a cosmetic treatment is common where she. I'm curious about how you came to use it. Thanks!
[/QUOTE]

Hi Dan, my inspiration came about 12 years ago when I began making soap.I was looking for special ingredients to use in my soap that were natural and nutrient dense. I make a dry mix (protein rich) of which rice flour is one of the ingredients. I add this mix to every batch I make. I find it adds smoothness, texture and bubbles to my soap but is also gentle on the skin. I add my mix to bath bombs as well. In some batches I use rice milk which I add at trace

 

[earlene]

Just an update on my Double Rice (Nov 2020) and subsequent Triple Rice Dec 9, 2020) soaps:

The recipes are slightly different for these two soaps, and I don't remember why, but I suspect it was related to running low on one or two of the oils, or wanting to sub some oils. In any case, it's not a good comparison. I may have to come back to this. Also the proportion of rice water and rice purée was quite different between the two, so I really do need to come back to this and re-visit the proportions in order to get a good idea of if I like this. Besides the Double Rice was re-batched, whereas the Triple Rice was not.

Re-batched Double Rice soap has really hardened more than I expected in spite of the extra glycerin (see below quotes). I can still press a dent into the bars with my fingers, but the soap is much much firmer and I'm just going to use it. The lavender color is pleasant and not as bad as I expected after having to destroy my swirled colors by re-batching, so I am not sure if I will use these for felted soap as I had thought I might. The bars are two months old at this point, so ready to use. As far as lather and bubbles, good, but I wouldn't say any better than I normally get.

Triple Rice soap made on 12/9/2020 still seems a bit drying at 5 weeks cure and a cleansing number of 13 (higher than what I used in the above soap). Also this one is too rough. I used Bob's Red Mill rice powder, but at such a small amount (only 2.15% of the total recipe) so I wasn't expecting it to be so rough on my skin. And I also used far less puréed rice (1/3rd less than in the previous Double Rice soap), but it was the same consistancy as in the previous soap. I'll give it another few weeks & try it again as it just hasn't cured long enough yet. I almost forgot to mention: This soap is super hard! In fact, event the sliver end cut I have used to test (twice now) at sink side, is hard as a rock.

Composition of the two soaps (per soapmakingfriend):

Double Rice Olive Oil 19.62%; Avocado Oil 12%; Sunflower Oil 9.86%; Rice Congee (water substitute) 9.23%; Coconut Oil, 76 deg 8.62%; Palm Oil 8.62%; Rice purée (use SB) 6.21%; Soy Wax, GW415 6.15%; Castor Oil 2.83%; Unknown percentage: Vegetable Glycerin (mixed with colorants)

Triple Rice Rice Bran Oil, HO (Riceland) 19.36%; Palm Oil 12.9%; Coconut Oil, 76 deg 9.03%; Cocoa Butter 7.74%; Soy Wax, GW415 6.45%; Shea Butter 3.87%; Palm Kernel Oil Flakes, hydrogenated 3.23%; Rice Powder 2.15%; Rice purée (use SB) 2.15%; Rice Congee (water substitute) 2.15%; Castor Oil 1.94%;

For both: Less than 1%: EDTA, ROE, Corn Silk; Not calculated: Colorants in both

Another update on the Triple Rice Soap that I made on 12/9/2020 with Bob's Red Mill rice flour:

The soap with rice flour is now 16 weeks into cure and the roughness continues to be quite exfoliating, which is okay for my feet, but it painfully scratched my belly skin today in the shower, so I won't be using this soap bare for anything other than my feet from now onward. I don't like using a soap poof, as I find even those too rough on my skin.

It just occurred to me that if I heavily felt these, they might be safe to use on my skin, so I may try that in the future, since I still have 6 more bars of this soap left and I won't gift soap that excoriates my skin. So I will move them to the area for future felted soaps and work on that after my hand sufficiently rehabilitated.

The Mochiko brand sweet rice flour that Misschief recommended should be arriving Monday. IF I can get it together, I'll make a batch Monday evening. I'd like to get that done so that it can be cut on Tuesday, because on Wednesday I have surgery on my dominant hand and will not be able to make soap for probably about 2 months, maybe a bit longer.

My plan is to compare the new soap with the Mochiko sweet rice flour to the soap with Bob's Red Mill rice flour and see if it's just my skin being overly sensitive or if the rice flour really will make a difference.

This is not the first time people have had a different experiences with additives than do I. It just may be that my skin is more fragile than average, though I never really thought of my skin as fragile before. I can only hope to find that this brand doesn't feel so rough in the finished soap, but that if it does, it would not really surprise me any considering what others have said about how colloidal oatmeal, or tea leaves and some or other additives in soap feel like to them compared to what they feel like to my skin.

For future reference these are the two rice flours I am talking about:

 

[Garden Gives Me Joy]

Would brown rice give difference results?

 

[Misschief]

Would brown rice give difference results?

I don't see why it would.

 

[ResolvableOwl]

The insights and experiences around here are so exciting, but this thread got a bit unwieldy over time. That's why I summarised the “rice” part of the recipes into a spreadsheet:
https://ethercalc.net/2t9lu47rrjr8Feel free to correct/add missing bits, and add your own twists on triple rice soap!

 

[AliOop]

@ResolvableOwl thank you! That is a nice summary of the different recipe combos. Still waiting to make a rice soap, although I did squeeze in a potato soap awhile back.

 

[nativedan]

I made a batch of soap last week that included rice elements. This was a personal batch to finish some safflower oil I had. I used about 2 heaping tablespoons of sweet rice flour and 1 heaping tablespoon of rice starch. I added both to the oil before lye. The texture of the flour is fine, I can feel it slightly between the fingers. The starch is superfine, just like the texture of cornstarch or kaolin clay. I HP and am waiting a little while for the bars to cure/harden.

I'm typically more generous with the butters and castor oil, but since this was an experiment I tried to keep costs down. The recipe wasn't as well-rounded as usual so I wasn't expecting stellar results. With that said, I tested a piece and it had a fantastic lather! The lather was luxurious, silky, and abundant. I also use sugar and cetyl alcohol to help boost suds, but I use these in all recipes and this lather felt different so I think the rice is the reason. And there was no detectable grain or exfoliating characteristics from the rice flour.

For information my recipe was:

Oil	%	Grams
Safflower Oil, high oleic	42	588
Coconut Oil, 76 deg	20	280
Olive Oil	9	126
Castor Oil	8	112
Cocoa Butter	7	98
Mango Seed Butter	7	98
Shea Butter	7	98
Total	100	1400

In general for my standard recipe I have replaced safflower with rice bran oil in the cook and meadowfoam seed oil for the superfat, but this batch was mainly to just use the safflower. In addition, the recipe included dehydrated aloe, sugar, cetyl alcohol, sodium lactate, sodium gluconate, and kaolin clay. I will make additions to the chart after I make another batch to get my measurements down.

Cheers!

 

[ResolvableOwl]

@nativedan Thank you! I took the liberty to outright add the outline of that recipe to the spreadsheet.

Food for thought to the HPers who are adding raw rice flour/powder/starch to their batters: rice + water + heat = gelled/cooked rice. Cooking the rice within the batter during HP might replace purée/congee addition. And even explain the hardness of rice bars – there is just less (free) water inside the young soap, that can keep the batter soft?
On the other hand, @Dawni reported that her HP batter stayed thin and well-behaved enough for agreeable mould casting.

 

[earlene]

The insights and experiences around here are so exciting, but this thread got a bit unwieldy over time. That's why I summarised the “rice” part of the recipes into a spreadsheet:
https://ethercalc.net/2t9lu47rrjr8Feel free to correct/add missing bits, and add your own twists on triple rice soap!

@ResolvableOwl, I corrected the percentage of RBO used in my triple rice soap, since I believe for uniformity, that column in the spreadsheet is meant to contain the percentage of oils only, and you entered the percentage of RBO for the entire batch (which includes all ingredients, not just the oils.) Not your mistake, as I only included the final composition as reported out by Soapmaking Recipe Builder & Lye Calculator. Can you add a notations column? My dominant hand prevents me from doing detail work for the duration of my recovery; even typing is cumbersome.

 

[nativedan]

@nativedan Thank you! I took the liberty to outright add the outline of that recipe to the spreadsheet.

Food for thought to the HPers who are adding raw rice flour/powder/starch to their batters: rice + water + heat = gelled/cooked rice. Cooking the rice within the batter during HP might replace purée/congee addition. And even explain the hardness of rice bars – there is just less (free) water inside the young soap, that can keep the batter soft?
On the other hand, @Dawni reported that her HP batter stayed thin and well-behaved enough for agreeable mould casting.

Good point.

I found that my batter was a bit dry, I had to spray warm water on top of the cook to help with dry bits. The lye concentration for the recipe was 33% and it was HTHP. The batter stayed smooth enough for manageable pouring into the mold though. Further experimentation is needed to determine how the rice flour and/or starch affects the cook because I did not make a slurry from actual cooked rice and surplus cook water- this may help offset the potential for the rice flour to "draw" water or affect the behavior of liquid in the recipe. I also used aloe that I dehydrated and ground myself, however it was a small amount, a heaping 1/4 teaspoon. I dehydrated 3 large aloe leaves and it only yielded a small handful of powder including the skin, so ultimately this may have had an affect on water as well.

 

[ResolvableOwl]

which includes all ingredients, not just the oils.

That's why it is a good idea to always double-check recipes, even if you just transcribe them and don't even intend to reproduce. Math would have quickly told me that the oils don't add up to 100%, and the strange numbers are not merely an artefact of eyeballed oil masterbatching.

BTW, I've added the column. All the best for your recovery!

how the rice flour and/or starch affects the cook because I did not make a slurry from actual cooked rice and surplus cook water- this may help offset the potential for the rice flour to "draw" water or affect the behavior of liquid in the recipe.

So you made kind of a “roux”? That's yet another twist to the story. The rice particles come into contact with hot water/lye while already suspended in the oils. All this under moisture competition with the aloe and evaporation losses… I can well imagine your troubles with the batter drying. Congrats that pouring was still possible, and I'm looking forward to your further findings.

Gosh, @Dawni, what have you done? One (seemingly) simple ingredient, so many new parameters to check out!

 

[ResolvableOwl]

I'm in! Yesterday, I made the first rice soap. In accordance with my comment earlier on, I gave rice vinegar a try. Still it's only two rice products into the batter, so it's only a “double rice” soap (following the spirit of this thread to not count RBO as a specifically rice-related ingredient). But I don't think think I have to apologise!


(Not a very beautiful loaf, but it'll be reprocessed anyway)

Following my usual math paranoia, I can give pretty exact numbers of how much of each constituents is in the final soap.

1. First, I milled whole-grain risotto rice (the only one I had at hand) to groats, hoping that this would cut down cooking times…
2. Boiled one part rice groats in five parts coconut milk. This is still too little liquid to overcook the rice into a somewhat smooth paste. I needed to add water later on, and it took well over an hour for the rice lumps to become creamy.
3. Lye water replaced by 20%ppo of a 5% rice vinegar (eq. 1.4%ppo sodium acetate)
4. Rice added to the oils (”split batter”). Rice mash (35%ppo, containing 4.8%ppo rice and 3.8%ppo coconut oil) + oils (40% rice bran, plus HO sunflower, cocoa butter, coconut, ROE). The rice/coconut helped to establish a stable emulsion solely with the spatula (didn't need the SB, so it's not a “purée” in the literal sense).
5. Upon lye/vinegar addition, the batter stayed in a pretty fluid state all the time (approx. 1 h on the stove). Initially, there was a slight ammonia-like odour (rice/coconut protein eaten up by lye, I guess). The opaque additions made it difficult to distinguish batter states (apple mash, vaseline, gel), so I had to resort to the texture to guess the cooking end point. Not a big issue, since I didn't make late additions (superfat, EO/FO) to the batter anyway.
6. Towards the end, I noticed that the batter became increasingly frothy (think of half beaten egg whites/aquafaba). Finally, I poured it into a cylindrical mould to let it solidify. Consistency would have allowed for individual moulds, or more evaporation. The balance readings tell me that it has a post-cook pre-cure water content of 40%ppo (which is about nine times the amount of rice).
7. The next day, I unmoulded it. It's still quite pliable, but a bit “gummy” like a very stiff rice pudding/polenta (which it essentially is ).

I also observe an ivory pinkish-orange colour, just like in Dawni's initial photos (despite my terrific photo manipulation skills ). The bran shreds of the unhulled rice give little reddish-brown specks, that add some “life” to the loaf – I hope that they don't become scratchy on the long run.
The soap has a peculiar, sweetish woody and a bit cheesy odour to it, that only remotely reminds of rice, coconut, or the unrefined cocoa butter I used. Nothing objectionable, but just not something you'd usually expect a soap to smell like.

Bottom line:

• HP rice soap is fun to do, and cooks in a well-behaved manner (thanks to the rice and/or the acetate)
• (Rice) vinegar in rice soap is a thing (since yesterday)
• Time will show if I can confirm the ostensibly quick cure, and lather happiness that was reported by many others in this thread.

ETA: Added to the recipe list.

 

[ResolvableOwl]

Tiny update on my double-rice soap: it's four months in, since I had rescued a tiny bar from becoming sushi rice. With cocoa butter on board, a hectic HP preparation, and lots of non-soapy stuff in the batter, I expected anything but a rapid cure, and so it was. As a soap, it had been pretty decent from the very beginning (abundant lather, nice skin feel), but it seemed to be stuck somewhere a third into cure and didn't dry up further, didn't lose its residual stickiness, nor weight at a significant rate.

Now after forgetting about it, and 104 days later, said reference piece has dried down from 43.3 g to 35.6 g, i. e. lost 18% moisture, and now has become somewhat decent hard too.

 

[Dawni]

Gosh, @Dawni, what have you done? One (seemingly) simple ingredient, so many new parameters to check out!

Haha and here my only "parameters" were: we eat it almost daily so it's always on hand; it was reportedly good for the skin (did not look it up in terms of soap but I figured, why not) and; well, I'm Filipino, and rice is a thing here (trying to go for natural, local, etc. branding though I came up with this before I thought of selling lol)

I'm glad people are still coming across this and trying it out. It still is my favourite soap, and still my best seller.

I wish I had the time (and brain juice) to study the science behind it...... lol

 

[amd]

Coincidentally...
Three years ago I made an experimental soap - I soaked dry rice in distilled water for a day or two and strained it to use in my lye. I had some amount of rice that slipped through the strainer (or spilled over, potayto potahto) so I blitzed it well with my stick blender and strained it again before adding my lye. I confess that I only tested this soap once, at about 6 weeks cure, to make sure it was a nice feeling soap, but didn't leave much of an impression on me. I sold all but one bar that I threw into my personal stash box. I'm currently using that soap in my shower. Besides being as hard as a brick, it has the most gorgeous silky lather ever. It definitely aged well. I've been contemplating making another small batch and aging for myself, and then this thread shows up again.

Damn enablers.

 

[ResolvableOwl]

Not literally a Triple Rice soap, but so many ideas and experience shamelessly stolen inspired by this thread, that I think a bit of cross-promotion is alright:
https://www.soapmakingforum.com/threads/triple-maize-soap.86307/

 

[LynetteO]

The insights and experiences around here are so exciting, but this thread got a bit unwieldy over time. That's why I summarised the “rice” part of the recipes into a spreadsheet:
https://ethercalc.net/2t9lu47rrjr8Feel free to correct/add missing bits, and add your own twists on triple rice soap!

Gr8 spreadsheet. I miss @ResolvableOwl!

 

[Jasmin]

Haha and here my only "parameters" were: we eat it almost daily so it's always on hand; it was reportedly good for the skin (did not look it up in terms of soap but I figured, why not) and; well, I'm Filipino, and rice is a thing here (trying to go for natural, local, etc. branding though I came up with this before I thought of selling lol)

I'm glad people are still coming across this and trying it out. It still is my favourite soap, and still my best seller.

I wish I had the time (and brain juice) to study the science behind it...... lol

Great inspiration! I will make this soap tonight. I'll let you know how it came out! First, I have to figure out how to make my version based on the things I already have in my home.

 

[Mobjack Bay]

I finally tested the Triple Rice Soap I made for the December Un-Challenge. I was shocked by the abundance of bubbles of all sizes. It’s a winner! @Dawni - thank you for the inspiration