Here’s my personal washing method, plus a few tips/tweaks I’ve discovered or heard about:
Just about any low-gluten flour should work. The finer the grind, the better, as bigger particles don’t rinse out as well. I learned that hard way that stone-ground flour is not ideal, although it works just fine.
Right before showering I mix up the “shampoo.” I used to mix it up about an hour before showering, but after learning a bit about breadmaking I learned that that is NOT a good idea - letting it sit in the water will make the gluten develop more, and we want to avoid high gluten flours as much as possible with flour washing. The gluten sticks, while the starch rinses out fairly well.
For my hair (since about hip length, high end of II thickness), I use about half a cup of dry flour, and as much warm water as it takes to make it around a thick shampoo consistency. Most people add more water, sometimes so much that it can be applied through an applicator bottle. I like the thick consistency personally, but it IS much harder to apply evenly on the scalp. I also add a few drops of essential oil, and mix thoroughly.
Once in the shower, I wet my hair and do a small amount of preening on my scalp to make sure everything is saturated with water. And then a basically scoop/pour small handfuls of the rye mush onto my scalp. I need to lift my hair away from my scalp to do this thoroughly. A lot of the time I will apply it from below as well as above, if that makes sense - I’ll come from down by my neck and smear it upwards, as well as putting it on top of my head and working it down. It’s during this time that I can really see why some people do it with more water and an applicator bottle.
Once it’s all applied, I usually let it sit on my head for a few minutes. It seems to soak in more and clean better if I leave it on for a bit. Near the end of those few minutes, I will add a tiny splash more water from the shower head and work it in, kind of like sudsing up regular shampoo. I actually get a little bit of a lather from it once I add more water after letting it rest on my head. I’m not sure if that’s also the case if you were to start with a more watery product in the first place, though.
Once it’s all on, rested, and lathered a tiny bit, I go right into rinsing. When I first started, I tried to rinse out as much flour as possible in the shower, trying to avoid getting the flakes out while drying. But after a while, I realized that you’ll just be wasting time trying to rinse beyond a certain point. Some flakes just do not come out in the water. Basically, as far as I’ve discovered, once the water from your hair is no longer flooded with bits of flour, you’re probably done. I used to rinse for a good 20 minutes before giving up, now I’ll rinse for maybe 5 minutes before I realize it’s as good as it’ll get in the water.
After that I’ll condition my ends, and get out. There are still usually a bunch of flour flakes in my hair, which I think is very common. But they DO mostly fall out on their own as your hair dries. Both airdrying and blowdrying work just fine, it’s simply a matter of your preference.
For me, the washing process takes about 30 minutes, plus drying time. So about an hour and a half with a cool blowdry to get the majority of the flakes out.
And that’s that! There are of course more tips and tricks and whatnot, but this is the gist of my own personal routine. I am super interested in hearing about all of YOUR experiences, experiments, and questions as well!
Let’s get this thread started and going strong!
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