Covering the soap to insulate it holds in heat so the soap will go through gel phase. You don't have to gel your soap. It will still turn into soap as it cures, but gelling will allow you to get it out of the mold a bit faster and also deepen your colors. What you want to avoid is the partial gel where only the middle part gels and you get the dark circle in the middle of the bar. Insulating or CPOP will ensure the entire loaf gels. You can also put the soap directly into the refrigerator or freezer to prevent it. I like to avoid gel in most instances because many EOs and FOs can disappear or morph from the heat.
Yes, it sounds like your soap got a bit too hot. The water content got hot enough to create steam, and it had to escape somewhere so it forced open cracks to the surface of your soap. Baby Rose is a pretty well-behaved floral, but since it IS a floral, I'm not surprised it got a little hot-headed on you. Sometimes those cracks will seal back up on their own if you catch them early and get the soap cooled down quickly. Either put a fan on it or get it into the fridge as soon as you notice the problem.
As for knowing when to cover and gel or not, that pretty much comes down to familiarity with your formula and what FO or EO you're using. You can almost always count on florals being problem children, and spicy fragrances are even worse in my opinion. I typically send those straight to the freezer and avoid gel at all costs. That is, unless I can feel it heating up in the mold as soon as it's poured. Then I know gel is already underway so I just let it do its thing and watch it carefully. We ALL have these things happen (and worse!), and as long as you learn from them, then I call that a success. It took a soap volcano and an oven fire for me to learn you shouldn't CPOP a milk soap.
Soap on!
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