Teach Soap

sea salt is a listed ingredient in all of Dr Bronner's soaps, so I tried it. Wow it worked great, even though it was an odd assortment of oils that I thought I needed the salt to harden up due to high percentage of sunflower and almond oil i needed to use up. Today is 3/12 and I made this batch on 2/23 and it is already very nice and hard compared to the bar next to it that I made two weeks at least earlier. That earlier-born non-salted bar is not nearly as firm as the salted bar right next to.


22.5% Olive
27.5% sunflower
25.7 Castor
15.9 Sweet Almond
13.3 Cocoa butter

2 or three tbsp of pink salt, lye and water as calculator specified

-- probably adding salt to all my bars from now on. Dissolved in a very small amount of hot water and added after trace immediately before pouring into the mold. Is that about the right method for adding salt? How do you know how much salt to add?

here it says to add the salt to the water before adding lye. That isn't what I did, I don't think. I'm pretty sure I subtracted a small amount of water from the total, heated salt in it to dissolve, and added AFTER trace. Or should I be doing it like this?

Adding the Salt
Weigh out the water you are going to mix your lye with. Before you add the lye, add ½ tsp. of salt per pound of oil in your recipe*. Stir well to make sure that all of the salt is dissolved. Add your lye to the salted water, making your lye solution, and resume your normal soap making procedure.

http://candleandsoap.about.com/od/tipst ... qtsalt.htm

I've always added my salt to the hot lye water so I could be sure it was dissolved all the way.

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Linda
I know the voices in my head aren't real, but they sure have some great ideas!

I don't think it matters, as long as it dissolves.

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Lesli Sagan
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Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.

i just wanted to say that adding salt to the hot lye water didn't result in as good a loaf as before. For my 3rd try @ a salt bar I like it better like i did it the 1st time- to subtract some water from total and add it after medium trace. I dissolved salt in water on stove in little pot while measuring oils into big pot, then after medium trace (around 98 this time- maybe i like 107 better) I added the salt water and then EOs immediately before giving last mix w/ stick blender and pouring into mold since it hardened up very quickly and nicely at that point, and gelled up in the mold to 135 for an hour or so before it started coming down (no cracking). Looks like my best salt incorporation to date. I think I haven't been blending it enough, this time i blended heck out of it until i was SURE it was tracing before I added salt water and EOs. I cooled saltwater first down to 100 before adding to saponifying soap in big pot by sitting little 181 degree pot of dissolved saltwater on bag of ice. Can't smell any of the lavender since it's been out of mold for 3 days. Hope the lye monster didn't get it.