How to obtain the whitest soap.

[Ravenscents]

I have been struggling to make my soap white. My goal is to make a white base to make swirls and designs in.

My tried and true recipe is:

35% lard
25% CO
30% Pomace OO
10% Grapeseed oil.
I add sea salt and Tussah Silk at the Lye water
I use powered goats milk in the oils
I use Kaolin clay to anchor my FO
I always force gel in an insulated box.

I have been moving my percentages around adding PO, taking away PO. Adding Shea, taking away Shea. My whitest, slow to trace recipe is the one above.

I can manipulate a white soap with lots of TD, but I prefer a white mica. The problem I'm finding is that this recipe (TD) comes to trace too fast and is chalky.

I feel like my basic recipe should be white already. So my question is what part of my recipe is pushing my soap to a cream color.
Is it the goats milk, the kaolin clay, the gel?

I've been making two batches a day keeping good notes and I just can't reason it out.

I am including a photo of a batch I made last night. the base had two tablespoons of white mica mixed in to 1 lb of oils and I got a tan/cream color. The second photo is my goal. (the drop swirl is a whole other story).

 

[Yooper]

Olive oil is definitely yellowish/green. That’s not a huge percentage, but it’s enough to make the soap not so white as desired.

Also, as milk heats up, it turns tan. Make sure you add the milk powder at trace, maybe mixed with a tiny bit of water dissolved. But the best way to use milk for me has been to use the milk reconstituted and then frozen, and used instead of the water in the recipe. Then, soap cool so that it doesn’t heat up and turn tan. Try to avoid gel, and keep it cold (like in the freezer) if you don’t want to risk it turning tan from heating up the milk.

 

[mobjack]

I suspect the goat milk is the primary culprit in your discoloration, but almost every oil can add to that. Even if I put my goat milk soap in the refrigerator or freezer so it doesn’t gel, the soap will still be off white to cream color. I don’t use OO pomace, but if it has a green tinge, it may be adding color. The same is true for the grapeseed oil. If you’re using unrefined shea that may also be adding a little color. My whitest base recipe is made with lard or lard with some tallow, a very pale golden olive oil, or high oleic sunflower (or safflower) and coconut oil. The olive oil I use is from Costco (refined, not evoo) or the palest kind I can find at the local grocery store.