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So, I make my usual salt bars with "full" water, the default setting on soap calc, which is "water as % of oils, 38%" which is about 30% lye concentration. They turn out great, if I do say so myself, in individual moulds. This is the ONLY soap I use individual moulds for - just logs on everything else.
I wanted to hurry the process a long a bit, maybe shave a week off the curing time, so I reduced the amount of water called for, so I was working with approx 26% as percent of oils, , which is about a 38% lye concentration.
As expected the recipe thickened a little faster, but everything went fine. When unmoulding the bars, however, they looked quite different. (Everything else about the recipe was identical to my original, btw)
On the original bars, I get a beautiful smooth finish, with a speckled look - like you can see the salt grains just under the surface. It looks very "spa" to my eye, and I have always loved it.
The new bars, had the same smoothness, but no salty speckled look.
My current hypothesis: the thinner batter of the original batch allows the salt to settle a bit in the bottom of the mould, so when unmoulded and turned over, you see it more easily just under the surface. The thicker, less water batch, does not allow any migration of the salt, so none sinks to the bottom and is visible later. Yes, I dug around in both bars with a paring knife, and both batches have the salt evenly distributed, it just seems the thicker batter either hides the salt grains or keeps them a mm or so beneath the "surface".
*sigh* - I want it all - bars that cure faster AND look great! lol
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