“Pearly whites” everyday gel toothpaste

How to make toothpaste?

Of all our recipes for homemade products, some are trickier to fine tune than others. These are the ones where we must meet all kinds of criteria and requirements. Toothpaste is one of those products. It has to taste good and foam slightly (just meeting these two criteria alone is difficult since foaming agents usually taste bad!). It has to look attractive (brown toothpaste? Ugh!) It has to be squeezed out of a tube – not scooped out of a pot with a spatula (we’re definitely stuck in our ways!), and of course it has to leave our breath minty fresh with no concern that it will damage our tooth enamel! All in all, that’s a pretty tall order! Fortunately, we love to experiment. We learned lots of useful stuff and came up with a recipe that meets all these requirements. And we love the result: a beautiful, stable white gel toothpaste with a fresh, slightly sweet taste as good as any you’ll find at the corner drugstore! It foams just enough and will be gentle on your tooth enamel. Try it – you won’t be disappointed! If you like it, double the recipe next time and place one of the tubes in the fridge as a backup.

Ingredients

Choose the appropriate quantities depending on whether you’re using a 100ml tube or a 120ml tottle bottle:

*** Be careful – the toothpaste tends to flow quickly

Tools

• 1 100 ml toothpaste tube or 1 120 ml tottle bottle
• Kettle or pot to boil water
• Mini-mixer with wheel attachment
• Small ramekins to weigh ingredients
• 2 medium bowls (glass or stainless steel)
• Small manual whisk
• Scales accurate to 0.1 g and to 0,01g
• 1 small silicone spatula
• 1 resealable Ziploc-type bag

Good to know!

• You could use tap water instead of demineralized water, but that may reduce the shelf life and stability of the product.
• The preservatives indicated are the best-suited for this recipe and are not interchangeable. Leaving them out would be a mistake since the toothpaste is composed primarily of water, a condition favourable to bacterial growth
• Calcium carbonate gently cleans and whitens teeth. Some other ingredients are more abrasive. For daily use, we don’t advise replacing the calcium carbonate.
• You can use guar or cellulose gum, which yield similar results. However, we have not tested other gums and can’t advise you about replacing them with other options.
• The recipe contains 0.7% menthol crystals, which are cooling and refreshing! You can decrease this quantity, but we don’t recommend increasing it.
• For the flavor and/or essential oils, choose just one or a blend, as long as the total weight is no more than 0.7 g.

Steps to follow

1. Disinfect all tools with ethyl alcohol.
2. Weigh all ingredients except for the water and glycerin in small ramekins.
3. Boil the water and then place the required amount in a medium-sized bowl.
4. While it is still hot, add the Geogard Ultra and the potassium sorbate. Dissolve and mix well.
5. Add the xylitol. Dissolve and mix well.
6. Add the menthol crystals. Dissolve and mix well, making sure to keep your face away from the fumes so as not to irritate your eyes or mucous membranes.
7. Blend the cellulose gum into this water phase using the battery-operated mini-mixer with wheel attachment. Hold the wheel attachment upright in the centre of the bowl and turn on the mixer. Slowly add the cellulose gum to the vortex created in the centre of the bowl by the mixer. Once all the gum has been mixed in, allow the gel to thicken. Don’t worry if there seem to be lumps; set the bowl aside, and the lumps should dissolve.
8. Every five minutes, whip the gel with the manual whisk and crush any lumps with a spoon.
9. In the other medium-sized bowl, add the correct amount of glycerin.
10. Gradually add the calcium carbonate to the glycerin, pressing the lumps with a spoon to moisten them. Mix well.  Once all the calcium carbonate has been mixed into the glycerin, the texture should be smooth and homogeneous.
11. Make sure the gel is smooth and lump free. Crush any remaining lumps with a spoon.
12. Whip manually to give it a smooth texture.
13. Add your chosen flavours and/or essential oils to the gel.
14. Add half of the gel to the glycerin/calcium carbonate mixture. Blend well with the manual whisk.
15. Add the rest of the gel and mix well.
16. Pour the gel toothpaste into the Ziploc bag with the help of the silicone spatula. *Tip: fold the sides of the bag over the top of a glass to hold it open.
17. Cut the corner of the Ziploc bag, making sure the opening is small enough to be inserted into the top of the toothpaste tube.
18. Remove the cap of the toothpaste tube.
19. Hold the toothpaste tube upright and press to remove the air. Twist the top of the bag to squeeze and fill the tube with toothpaste.

Use and storage

Use daily as you would any commercial toothpaste. If you carefully disinfect all the tools as instructed, your toothpaste should keep well for several months (You should have lots of time to finish the tube).