The Blues - Tooth soap recipe

I'm not a blue person.  My colours are the warm tones, especially red.  It's not that I dislike blue, in fact I think blue is a very nice colour.  It's just not me.  So I tend to buy things that are not blue, except jeans.  And since I really like the blue of jeans, I guess it could be said that indigo blue is a favorite colour after all, even if I'm not a blue person.  I have been experimenting with dyeing from Woad and Japanese indigo.  It really is an amazing process to turn green leaves into a clear blue colour.  Just like magic.

I haven't made any blue soaps, although I did try once.  I used indigo powder, but not enough, so the colour disappeared.  Sometimes it doesn't pay to skimp on ingredients.  so when I got the idea for this soap I decided to be generous with the Indigo powder.  I somehow thought it would be appropriate to make a blue tooth soap.  I made tooth soap a long time ago and I still have most of it.  Not because I haven't used it.  It's just that it lasts forever.  But I started to feel a little deprived of the fresh minty taste of conventional toothpaste.  My old tooth soap had baking soda in it and baking soda just doesn't taste very good.  So I have been wanting to do a new tooth soap.  And then I thought about the old blueing agents.  Since i'm quite old, I remember when it was possible to buy a blueing agent to make white laundry appear whiter.  Admittedly, I just barely remember the stuff, but it was sold in the olden days and used.  Now they have something that works in a similar, but in a more sophisticated way, called optical brighteners.  But I thought it might be a great idea to make a blue tooth soap, maybe it would make teeth appear whiter, or it would just look nice.

I have mint growing in the garden and I harvested all of it when it was starting to get cold.  I made some mint jelly, but decided that it really is just too weird to eat that with lamb.  Even if British people do that.  It tastes just like toothpaste.  I guess one has to be reared on that to appreciate it.  But I used part of the mint for a tea that I used as the water phase in my soap.  So the genius me didn't quite think things through.  The art major should have known that mixing the yellow mint tea and the blue indigo would produce a magnificent green.  But I just didn't think.  So here is my "blue" tooth soap:

It's a small recipe (200g/7oz), but it'll last for a long time.

Olive oil 30% 60g / 2.1oz
Cocoa butter 30% 60g / 2.1oz
Coconut oil  22% 44g / 1.6oz
Soybean oil 15% 30g / 1.0oz
Neem Tree oil 3% 6g / 0.2oz

Mint tea 38% 76g / 2.7oz
Xylitol 2 tsp

Lye 28g / 1oz

Peppermint eo
Ginger eo
Licorice extract

Since I don't want the tooth soap to produce too many suds, I used much less coconut oil than usual and much more of the cocoa butter.  The neem oil has anti bacterial properties, so I added some of that.  I also added 1 tsp licorice extract, which is supposed to be good for the gums,  to the essential oil blend. I used 1/4 tsp ginger (again that is supposed to be good for the gums) and 1 tsp peppermint for that fresh minty taste that I had been craving.  I also ground up 1 tsp zink oxide and 4 capsules of magnesium citrate (good for teeth) with about 1/4 tsp indigo powder.

I made these into little hearts since I think they look kind of cute.  I have tried the soap already although it needs some more time to cure.  Well I can't say that it whitens the teeth, but it has a minty taste and it cleans well without sudsing too much.  I might add some more xylitol next time and even some more peppermint eo.  Just to get that really, really fresh minty taste.  And I might even skip the mint tea and go for a truly blue soap.

Tooth Soap - or perhaps I just need a vacation

And did I mention that I love old tools? They just don't make
them like they used to.  Those toothbrushes have real boar
bristles, but they are way too big and scratchy to be used for
anything other than cleaning. And, yes, I use them for that.

I made tooth soap, oh! probably about a year ago.  I actually got quite absorbed by the subject and experimented with different recipes and forms.  I made one that actually (quite by accident) had the consistency of toothpaste and I really liked it.  It had a mild and nice taste and a lovely green colour but it oxidized very quickly and turned an ugly brown colour.  I used it for the longest time by wiping off the oxidized surface and using the fresh lovely green paste, but in the end I gave up and threw it out.  My current tooth soap is a white bar soap.

My interest in tooth soap started a few years ago when I started to look at toothpaste in the "natural" section of the grocery store.  I had tried Tom's and found that to be quite nice, but then I tried Weleda toothpaste and that had no fluoride.  Now I'm not going to say anything to discourage anyone from using toothpaste with fluoride, but I decided for myself that the health of my gums was a higher priority than cavities.  So I used the red Weleda toothpaste for a while and liked it a lot.  But it started me wondering what toothpaste was anyway.  And after reading labels and researching I discovered that people have used a lot of different stuff to clean their teeth and soap is certainly one of them and modern day toothpaste contains SLS.

Now, I need to say that my dentist hasn't noticed any change in my oral health since I gave up commercial toothpaste, but I would not want to interfere with anyones use of the commercial stuff.  I just gag if I use it after all this time.  Nuclear waste springs to mind.

But I am very interested to hear if anyone has done experiments with tooth soap.  The soap that I have used for the last few months is very simple and I have to admit that it has a horrible taste.  But only in the beginning, you get used to it.  It's a basic 70% olive and 30% coconut.  To that I added calcium and magnesium tablets that I crushed and some bicarbonate as well.  The bicarb is what gives it an unpleasant taste.  In an effort to counteract that I added some Xylitol, but I cant's say that I taste any sweetness.

If I were to do another one (which I will eventually although tooth soap seems to lasts forever) I would probably try to dig up the recipe for the green paste and use some parts of that and use 100% olive oil.  Suds really are unnecessary.  But I have to say that my favorite recipe is the one that I read that Benjamin Franklin used. It was honey and charcoal.  My son-in-law agreed to try it out with me and I think I have to hold him to it.

But, having confessed to this strangeness, I also have to admit that I just really need a vacation.  I think I have mentioned once or twice that I don't like cold weather at all.  So even if we have had a fairly mild winter so far I am jumping ship and heading for the southern seas to bask in sunshine for two weeks.
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