Opinions on recipe modifications

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I think it depends on where you are. Here I can buy my olive oil and sunflower oil locally, and sunflower oil is cheaper. It could be completely different in Montreal.

At my local grocery store, olive is $20 (Canadian) for 3 liters and I THINK I paid $11.50 for 3 liters of sunflower. I'm going back to verify the sunflower price.
 
Compare
Olive: $NZ9.50/L =$CAD8.29
Sunflower: $NZ5.58/L (not high oleic) =$CAD4.87
Safflower: $NZ35/L =$CAD30.53
RBO: $NZ4.50/L =$CAD3.95
Hi KiwiMoose - Have you tried Woolworths/Safeway for Safflower oil. I get it there for $AUD10.66/L ($AUD8 for 750ml bottle). It's just called "Heart Smart"....Safflower Oil in fine print.
Supplier is a Queensland company, Plentyfoods.
 
Ok... I found a website that said,

"You never really want to substitute 100% of olive oil in a soap recipe with other oils. At least I don’t. Even though olive oil is a liquid oil, it cures out rock hard. Replacing it with other liquid oils, such as sunflower or apricot kernel, will create a much softer and mushy soap."

I was going to replace all my olive with sunflower. Should I do that?
 
Ok... I found a website that said,

"You never really want to substitute 100% of olive oil in a soap recipe with other oils. At least I don’t. Even though olive oil is a liquid oil, it cures out rock hard. Replacing it with other liquid oils, such as sunflower or apricot kernel, will create a much softer and mushy soap."

I was going to replace all my olive with sunflower. Should I do that?
They make a good point - compare the palmitic stearic combined total of you recipe wiht OO to your recipe with Sunflower and see what comes up.
 
In my experience, HO sunflower cures out at least as hard as olive oil, if not harder (and quicker). As long as said website (or, more importantly, the label of the oil bottle in the store) doesn't disclose if they're referring to HO or HL sunflower, their advice isn't reliable, and it's better to stay with olive. Same for safflower.

But if you can positively say that it's the HO variant, then the soapmaking qualities don't play a role, and you can decide upon soft factors like colour, availability, or origin.

I'm still amazed that in the big world out there, base oils seem to be at least three times as expensive as in Germany (EU subsidies?).
Semi-unrelated (and more by accident), I looked up the palm oil price just today, it's at about 4.50 MYR/kg, that's about 1.20 CAD/L.

ETA: @KiwiMoose P/S make little difference. What has a HUGE impact wrt curing hardness, mushiness (and rancidity) is the oleic/linoleic ratio. Linoleic acid never contributes in a meaningful way to physical hardness, but oleic acid does. That's one of the weaknesses of the soapcalc number bureaucracy. And that's also why apricot kernel oil is physically worse than almond oil (though their “soapcalc number” profiles look very similar).
 
In my experience, HO sunflower cures out at least as hard as olive oil, if not harder (and quicker). As long as said website (or, more importantly, the label of the oil bottle in the store) doesn't disclose if they're referring to HO or HL sunflower, their advice isn't reliable, and it's better to stay with olive. Same for safflower.

But if you can positively say that it's the HO variant, then the soapmaking qualities don't play a role, and you can decide upon soft factors like colour, availability, or origin.

I'm still amazed that in the big world out there, base oils seem to be at least three times as expensive as in Germany (EU subsidies?).
Semi-unrelated (and more by accident), I looked up the palm oil price just today, it's at about 4.50 MYR/kg, that's about 1.20 CAD/L.

ETA: @KiwiMoose P/S make little difference. What has a HUGE impact wrt curing hardness, mushiness (and rancidity) is the oleic/linoleic ratio. Linoleic acid never contributes in a meaningful way to physical hardness, but oleic acid does. That's one of the weaknesses of the soapcalc number bureaucracy. And that's also why apricot kernel oil is physically worse than almond oil (though their “soapcalc number” profiles look very similar).
I'm no scientist - I shall defer to the wise owl :)
 
The label says Mid-Oleic.

Dee Ann gave me a formula long ago where I could compute the Oleic value from the Nutrition Facts label. I have it buried somewhere in lots of information. Perhaps one of you know the formula and could help me out?

Fat - 9 gms
Saturated fat 1 gm
Poly unsaturated - 2.5 gm
Omega-6 2.5 gm
Monosaturated - 5 gm
 
Lucky you for having these numbers! Yes, that's mid-oleic, somewhere between HO and HL. Most important is the ratio poly-unsaturated/total fat (about 0.28 = 28%). HO has typically less than 10%, HL up to 70%. The value is similar to canola oil, and not much higher than olive oil (13%).

If your recipe from post #20 is still valid wrt soft oils, then you are at 33%, which is perfectly fine to use mid-oleic sunflower for. You have plenty of hard oils/additives (lard, shea, coconut, beeswax); the sunflower oil will increase PUFA by about 9%, which is still in the tolerance region of rancidity.
 
Hi KiwiMoose - Have you tried Woolworths/Safeway for Safflower oil. I get it there for $AUD10.66/L ($AUD8 for 750ml bottle). It's just called "Heart Smart"....Safflower Oil in fine print.
Supplier is a Queensland company, Plentyfoods.
Nah - we can't get it here. We have Countdown that stocks some woolworths brands, but safflower seems to be designated as a 'health food' here which brings with it a higher price tag. Not a supermarket item - a health store item.
 
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