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French Milled Soap


chuck_35550

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How to Make French Soap

The difference between making a batch of basic soap and a batch of French soap is that French soap is milled. This means that the soap is put through a two-part cooking process, which creates a soap that is richer and more moisturizing than basic soap. French soap may take a little longer to create, but your skin will thank you.

Things You'll Need

6 cups refrigerated water, 2 large pots, rubber gloves, goggles, 14 oz. lye, 2 thermometers, 42 oz. olive oil, 64 oz. palm oil, 3 oz. cocoa butter, plastic spoon, rubber spatula, soap tray mold, cheese cloth, butcher paper or heavy duty wax paper, vegetable grater, small saucepan, 1 oz. cocoa butter, 1 oz. glycerin, 1 oz. jojoba oil, 1 oz. essential oil of lavender, Soap molds.

Basic Soap

1

6 cups of ice water, weigh 41 oz. of the cold water and pour it into a large pot.

2

Put on your gloves and goggles. Very slowly and carefully, add 14 oz. of lye to the cold water. Using a plastic spoon, stir it gently until the lye is completely dissolved. The lye will cause the water to heat up very quickly. Place a thermometer on the pot and set it aside to cool. When the lye mixture reaches approximately 105 degrees F, begin to heat up your oils.

3

Combine 42 oz. olive oil, 64 oz. palm oil and 3 oz. cocoa butter in a large pot over low to medium heat. Place a thermometer on the pot. Stir the mixture with a plastic spoon as it melts. When the mixture reaches 100 degrees F, remove it from the heat and place the pot in the sink.

4

Put on your gloves and goggles. Slowly and carefully, pour the lye mixture into the oil mixture, constantly stirring with a plastic spoon. Continue to stir gently for 15 to 20 minutes.

5

Test for tracing. Run a rubber spatula over your mixture. If the indentation holds for a few seconds, then your soap is ready. If not, continue to stir for 15 more minutes, then test for tracing again. This could take up to 1 hour.

6

Pour the soap into a soap tray, cover it with a cheese cloth and allow it to set for 12 to 24 hours. Pop the soap out of the tray, wrap it in butcher's paper and allow it to cure for 2 to 4 weeks or until the soap has hardened enough to grate and go through the second cooking process.

French Milled Soap

1

Cover your work surface with butcher's paper. Break off chunks of your cured soap and grate it with a vegetable grater over the butcher's paper. If the soap still has moisture in it, wear your gloves to protect your skin from the lye.

2

Place the grated soap into a large pot. Add 7 oz. of water and stir to combine. Place the pot on the stove over low heat, stirring slowly and gently as the soap melts. If bubbles form stop stirring for a moment until they disappear. Melting the soap could take up to 1 hour.

3

Melt 1 oz. of cocoa butter in a small saucepan over low heat. Add 1 oz. each of glycerin, jojoba oil and essential oil of lavender. Stir well until thoroughly and evenly combined.

4

Add the cocoa butter mixture to the melted soap. Stir gently until thoroughly and evenly combined.

5

Carefully pour your soap into soap molds. Run a rubber spatula over the top to even out the soap and remove spillage. When the soap has formed a "skin" on top, place the molds in the freezer for at least 2 hours.

6

Invert your molds over butcher's paper to remove the soaps. Gently tap or twist the molds if the soaps won't come out, but be careful--the soaps will still be soft. Place the soaps in a cool, dark place and allow them to cure for 2 to 4 weeks, turning them once weekly. The soaps will be ready when you can press them with your finger and not leave an impression.

I have not personally tried this recipe but thought maybe some of us might be interested in giving it a try. Run the recipe through soap calc and make adjustments to amounts and use grams instead of ounces for greater accuracy. I would be interested to know if anyone has ever made a similar recipe and results if anyone tries the recipe.

Steve

Edited by chuck_35550
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If you use a stick blender the process will be much faster. Stirring with a spoon takes forever to reach trace. There is no need to wear gloves when rebatching soap. Cured soap should have no lye present unless it's lye heavy. If the soap is new, there is no need to add any water. 7 ozs. of water to how much soap? If you add to much water to rebatched soap, as it starts the shrink, you could end up with misshaped bars. Adding to much extra oil or butter to rebatched soap could make the soap either greasy or soft. Since oil does not evaporate, those bars would stay soft.

Cups are not a very accurate measure. Please weigh your water. For that size batch, I would use 27 to 41 fluid ounces of liquid.

Edited by soapbuddy
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Well the cups are just merely an amount of ice water and then you weigh out 41 oz. This article may have been written before stick blenders but go figure. The recipe would make 10 pounds of soap that has been turned into tray molds and covered with cheese cloth. Not sure about the cheese cloth and then stored in paper for 2 to 4 weeks and then grated for the rebatch. I don't rebatch, so I don't know but just read that it kinda gets stringy rather than melt and understand some people add water to get the soap in a fluid enough state to pack into a mold. Adding the extra cocoa butter, glycerin, jojoba and essential oils sounds like super fatting your oils that you wouldn't want saponified? So, would this be very fluid and easily poured into the molds or just more manageable for the individual molds? I guess you could do a test of one pound and see how it would work?

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Steve, I think you may be confusing "hand milled" or rebatched soap with French Milled. French Milled soap is a lot more than just rebatched...

French Milled Soaps are a good deal smoother to use than conventional soaps. They produce a more creamy, exuberant lather more quickly with a very even color.

French Milling is a compounded hot and cold process where the roller temperatures are alternately mastered with hot and cold water. Among the early uses for stainless steel was the idea of running soap between two rollers. This then led to running hot and cold water through the rollers, in addition to the soap. Voila – French Milled Soap was born! The benefit is a longer lasting bar that is far milder.

When regular soap is made, it is dried before being turned into soap bars. During this drying action, the soap becomes crystals and it is these, which vary in size, and which can produce a quite coarse-grained and crude base when made into soap bars.

French milled soap is “triple milled” because the soap concoction passes across the heavy duty steel rollers a minimum of three times ahead of being molded into the final bar shape that we are all so familiar with. This recurrent milling of the soap crystals mashes the them, making them into an exceedingly fine and smooth paste, before being turned into bars. The milling action as well makes the soap mixture homogeneous, removing the glycerin, which would adhere to the rollers. The final result is a thick, durable bar. This process also guarantees that the soap colors, fragrance and texture are evenly distributed and consistent throughout the soap bar, helping make it pure natural soap, with no blotching even with heavy coloring.

Some soap plants have a single roller not three in their process line. However many of them are cut-price mills made in China and India which, because of their build quality, means they are ineffective in implementing the amount of force on on the rollers that is required to produce superior soaps.

Apparently, as well as people selling hand-milled or rebatched soap as french-milled, there are M&P products being sold as "french milled" both of which are deceptive and inaccurate, according to WSP and other soapmaking experts.
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I understand the difference Stella. The article presented this procedure as a way to imitate french milled quality. It looks like rebatch to me, but I threw this out to see what kind of response it would get. I think that has been accomplished. If you look at the complete process that the French use to make their fine soaps it would be much more involved; especially those companies that have been making soap for many years. French and Italian soaps are always touted as the bar that others are measured by (no pun intended). I don't want anyone to be offended by that remark; the intention is to open a study of techniques that might be interesting to soap makers on the Board.

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For standard rebatching, you would not want to add any extra water unless the soap is old and dry. Adding too much water to rebatching will mishape the bars as the soap cures. There is no guarantee that any oils or butters would end up as your superfat, unless you add them during rebatch. Also, if you add to much oil or butter to rebatched soap, you could end up with softer bars and they might become oily or greasy.

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Truly milled soaps are not rebatched. I wish. They are not melted and smooshed, but actually ground up and mixed and then reground to incorporate the the additives and then pressed under a lot of weight.

yea, the grinding is done by putting through rollers kinda like pasta rollers - but still the point is to reduce it to itty bitty bits and then mixing.

Triple milled just means that they say they grind 3X.

I WISH rebatching could get us french milled soap.

ETA: and yes, I've made soap with these oils, and yes I've rebatched some of them. Not so special, IMO, and NOT French milled.

Edited by CareBear
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  • 1 year later...

I try to add as little water as possible when I'm hand milling my soaps, I start with a tablespoon and I find that the double boiler just the rest if I shred it up fine enough. I find adding a little sodium lactate helps to bring the soap together too. I tried it once on one of my softer loaf mistakes and it made a very hard bar once done with. :) Hope that helps for anyone who's looking for hand milling tips also.

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