Sodium Lactate in 'slow' recipe?

[Tara_H]

I'd love to get some thoughts on the recipe below.

I've been seriously bitten by this Dutch pour bug, but it's driving me crazy how quickly the oils harden in the cold so I wanted to try a new formulation with more oils that are liquid at room temperature (and hopefully not too expensive) so that I can practice.

All the values for this fall outside the 'recommended' range, but only just, and I don't think to any concerning degree, other than the hardness/longevity part. Given that I'm using this as a topper for a slab with a different recipe, I don't want the pattern part to melt away massively faster than the rest of the soap.

I was thinking to use sodium lactate to try to counter that problem; I have some which I bought recently, but I've never used it yet, so I only know about it theoretically. Does it actually make sense for this purpose or would I just be creating other problems? (I considered and rejected stearic acid, on the understanding that it will also massively accelerate trace, but I didn't see any evidence that the same will happen with sodium lactate.)

 

[dibbles]

I don't know that sodium lactate will add to the longevity or hardness of your soap. I use it to allow me to get my soap out of my silicone molds faster.

 

[Obsidian]

Pretty sure SL only helps with physical hardness, not longevity.
Are you willing to use lard? It really slows down trace. You could replace the OO and have a really nice, long last soap.

 

[Tara_H]

Pretty sure SL only helps with physical hardness, not longevity.
Are you willing to use lard? It really slows down trace. You could replace the OO and have a really nice, long last soap.

I don't have access to lard, but I normally use a lot of tallow - the problem I have is not so much that trace is too fast, but it's so cold here that my high-tallow recipe goes solid as soon as it hits any surface that's slightly chilled.

Not sure if you saw my thread at Trying the Dutch Pour technique but basically I was working in what is essentially an outbuilding, if I had to guess it was around 10-15 degrees C (50-60F?) in there so all the surfaces, including my slab, were chilled to some extent.

I'm going to try again in the kitchen now that I've established the level of mess I can expect, but it's not massively warmer in there, maybe about 18C (65F?), and I'll be very frustrated if it all goes solid again on my next try. Hence the reformulation attempt.

 

[jcandleattic]

Agreed with others, SL will not add to the longevity of the bar, nor will it help your batter stay fluid longer.
You can try to reformulate, but if you like the recipe you use, maybe try soaping warmer. Not necessarily the room temp, but the temp of the oils/lye while making soap.

 

[KimW]

hmmmmm...seed mat under the mold while working on the soap? I will say that while SL can make a batter more fluid, as dibbles has said, it's also used to harden soap faster, so I would hesitate to think it was a solution to soap batter cooling and hardening too fast.

I'm with you in that your recipe does look as though it would be a slow mover and slow to setup, but I understand what you're saying about it "going solid" when it hits a cold mold, especially as cool as 10-15C, and also not having enough working time to play with the technique and your design.

If you're not able to heat a small working space, or use a seed mat, in your shop I think you're on to the solution by working in your warmer kitchen. My basement is around usually right at 18C, which isn't too cold, but cool enough that I put a towel under anything that I don't want to get too cool too quickly, like my lye solution...and my coffee! (not on the same towel of course! lol)

 

[earlene]

If your goal is to do a surface pour, which the Dutch Pour is, then I'd say leave out the hard oils altogether. Using a simple soft oil formula, even just olive oil or just HO Sunflower, or whatever liquid oil you can source in your region, will give you a formula with a lot more play time. CO re-solidifies at cool temperatures pretty quickly, so I'd leave it out or at least cut down to 10% or less. After all, this is not the main body of the soap, just the surface design.

 

[ResolvableOwl]

All the values for this fall outside the 'recommended' range, but only just, and I don't think to any concerning degree

One value does fall out of the recommended range, by a degree that some really would call “concerning”: Poly-unsaturated fatty acids. Your Linoleic+Linolenic is at 29%, which means that your soap will be prone to DOS and rancidity. (As a rule of thumb, recommended upper limits around 15% are circulating.)

The long curing times you're expecting will amplify the risk. You won't be happy to eventually have a nice hard bar after several months, that has brownish-yellow specks all over, and smells off.
Easy and minimally invasive, you might replace (at least part of) the sunflower oil by the high-oleic variant. Lowering linoleic in favour of oleic acid will greatly reduce DOS risk, increase hardness a bit, while it won't change saponification speed or skin feel too much. And: consider using ROE.

 

[Tara_H]

...HO Sunflower...

...you might replace (at least part of) the sunflower oil by the high-oleic variant...

Thanks both!

Ok, it looks like I may be back to the drawing board here. I've never seen high-oleic sunflower oil in the shops here (or even heard of it outside of online soaping contexts) and a quick search leads me to believe I'm looking at a minimum cost of around €50 to get some shipped to me, which defeats the point of my low cost recipe

I'll do some more playing around with the calculator and see if I can get anything to work. I might add back some of the tallow and see if I can get a mix of oils that are liquid or close to liquid at room temperature and take it from there.

 

[ResolvableOwl]

HO sunflower oil often isn't expensive. Look out for “cooking/frying oil”. If the ingredients say sunflower, and “mono-unsaturated fats” are very high (>70%) this is just HO sunflower oil. Some supermarkets here have greater selection in HO sunflower oils than regular ones, at about the same price point.

 

[Tara_H]

Ah ok, that's good to know!

This is all it says on the bottle I have at home, but I'll look out the next time I'm in the supermarket and see if there are any different options.

 

[GemstonePony]

Sorry if this has already been suggested, but what about lowering the lye concentration to 28% (increasing the liquid)? The top layer would warp a little as it cures, but it might anyways if you're changing recipes. If you were doing a whole loaf, overheating could be a concern at that concentration, but since it's just a thin top layer that won't be a problem.

 

[ResolvableOwl]

@Tara_H: Oof, hard to guess from the smoke point alone… something more definite would be better in any case, be it only to know better about the fatty acid profile. My cheap supermarket sunflower oil (regular) says 26% oleic acid (a bit more than most soap calculators assume), and 175°C smoke point.

 

[earlene]

Ah ok, that's good to know!

This is all it says on the bottle I have at home, but I'll look out the next time I'm in the supermarket and see if there are any different options.

View attachment 54919

See this link for an explanation of High Oleic vs Mid-Oleic sunflower oil:

http://www.centrafoods.com/blog/types-of-sunlower-oil-high-oleic-vs.-mid-oleic-vs.-linoleic
It looks like the sunflower oil you have Cannot be determined from that label, unless I'm reading it wrong, which I was when I first looked at it. But since it doesn't tell you the amount of mono-unsaturates, it's hard to know. However, you might be able to extrapolate by comparing it to another label that does show monosaturates. DeeAnna is better at explaining how to do this. (The claissicbells link is hers.)

If you don't know which brands in Ireland to look for, a Google search may help. Here is a brand sold on Amazon UK that is HO sunflower. If you search for HO oils on Amazon UK, perhaps you will find brands selling HO oils and then you can look for them in your food markets.

Here is another link with more information about other oils available in HO & how to tell the difference and here is another and another. Maybe one or all of those will help you figure out how to read the labels in your market.

Sorry, I had to keep editing. My browser is lagging badly & I kept missing stuff.

 

[Tara_H]

@earlene thanks so much for putting that all together for me!

I was inspired to do a scan of the kitchen and it looks like most of the oils have a saturates/mono/polyunsaturated breakdown, just the sunflower oil and rapeseed don't.

I have:
Olive oil - 77% (plus a cheap one that doesn't say)
Almond - 60.2%
Peanut - 54.6%
Sesame - 34.5%
Coconut - 7.9%

If I'm correctly reading the info you sent, these correspond exactly to the oleic acid values? So basically I'm looking at olive oil unless I can find an alternate in the supermarket. Which is fine, olive oil isn't super cheap but it won't break the bank either.

 

[earlene]

@earlene

I have:
Olive oil - 77% (plus a cheap one that doesn't say)
Almond - 60.2%
Peanut - 54.6%
Sesame - 34.5%
Coconut - 7.9%

If I'm correctly reading the info you sent, these correspond exactly to the oleic acid values?

Maybe. It depends on what those numbers represent on your labels.
IF those numbers you have are for the amount of monounsaturated fat, yes.
IF they represent something else, then maybe not.

Take a look again at DeeAnna's classicbells link above.
Total fat = saturated + polyunsaturated + monounsaturated fats
where monounsaturated is Oleic.


My point was about how to tell if your stores carry the HO version of Sunflower.

So basically I'm looking at olive oil unless I can find an alternate in the supermarket. Which is fine, olive oil isn't super cheap but it won't break the bank either.

Yes to Olive Oil. It is naturally high in Oleic and you don't have to look for a HO version, because it is already high oleic.

In fact, if you want to see which oils contain higher percentages of Oleic acid, use this reference: Sort Oils then sort by Oleic. That might help you choose oils you can purchase near you that may be within your budget.

 

[Tara_H]

IF those numbers you have are for the amount of monounsaturated fat, yes.

Ah sorry, yes re-reading I wasn't clear - those are the mono-unsaturated numbers for the oils where that's specified. It seems like sometimes it's listed separately and sometimes it's just like the label in the photo above where I can't tell.

Really appreciate all your help on this!

 

[ResolvableOwl]

A side anecdote: many oil manufacturers have the bad habit to give numbers in w/v percentages (g/100 mL). Probably to increase the appeal of their nutritional information (“Hey, I'm only 92 g fats per 100 mL!” sounds a bit less calorie-heavy than “I'm 100% fat”). But that means that, say, declared “31 g poly-unsaturates per 100 mL of oil” are in fact 34% rather than 31% on a true percentage basis. It's not that much of a difference, but still a deviation to keep in mind while comparing numbers on bottles with soap calculator numbers.

At least everyone is (chemically imprecise, but) bureaucratically consequential in including the glycerol content into the fatty acid profile. “Mono-unsaturated fats” really means ”Triglyceride equivalents of mono-unsaturated fatty acids (including both the fatty acids themselves and the chemically bound glycerol)”.

 

[Tara_H]

Well I went to Tesco's today (the biggest supermarket within driving distance) and husband and I went through the whole shelf of oils! Other than the olive oils, there was a very small bottle of sunflower oil, intended for misting, which had 77% mono-unsaturated fats, all the rest were max in the 50s or didn't specify at all.

Annoyingly all of the large bottles of cheaper oils didn't have it listed separately; I presume they don't have a sufficient level of quality control for it to be consistent and so they don't break it out.