Salt Soaps: A Perspective from Crystal, Part One

On June 25th, I released a guest written post from Tess about Salt Soaps. Following a request for guest writers, Crystal volunteered and came forward with two posts on Salt Soaps. Today, I’ll share one of the two posts about salt soaps and I will release the other post tomorrow.

Sea Salt Shine Soap

I was asked to show my recipe for a salt soap. My original recipe calls for Beeswax, however I reworked the recipe and removed the beeswax, to allow for time to work with taking pictures for the post. To my surprise……well you will have to wait to the end for that answer. I made this batch a very tiny 5 oz. total weight in size.

Collect needed items:

Ingredients
Olive oil
Coconut Oil
Shea Butter
Palm Oil
Avocado Oil
Fragrance
Distilled Water
Sodium Hydroxide
Dead Sea Salt Fine

Equipment
Scale
Gloves
Goggles
Mixing container (I use pint wide mouth canning jars)
Stirring utensil I use popsicle sticks)
Soap Mold

Recipe in ounces:
Olive Oil – 1.83 oz.
Coconut Oil – 0.91 oz.
Palm Oil – 0.37 oz.
Shea Butter – 0.37 oz
Avocado Oil – 0.18 oz.
Fragrance – 0.04 oz
Dead Sea Salt – 0.23 oz.

Distilled Water – 1.21 oz.
Sodium Hydroxide – 0.51 oz.

Recipe in grams:
Olive Oil – 52g
Coconut Oil – 26 g
Palm Oil – 11 g
Shea Butter – 11 g
Avocado Oil – 5g
Fragrance – 1 g
Dead Sea Salt – 7g

Distilled Water – 34 g
Sodium Hydroxide – 15g

First step I like to always take is mixing the sodium hydroxide and water together, so it can start cooling. However, when working with such a small batch I will weigh out my oils first, as you can melt the oils in the microwave. Also the smaller amount of Lye water cools faster than a large batch.

Weigh out oils, mix your lye solution, and bring both to approximately 125 degrees F. I work with temperatures of either mixture to be within 5 degrees of each other. Exact temperature is not critical.

Combine oils and lye solution. Stir until thin trace. This step for this small of a batch took less than 30 seconds. Add your fragrance, stir thoroughly, stir in your sea salt, pour into your selected mold. My trial size mold is a silicone cupcake pan from Wal-Mart, it does impart a little bit of a pinkish tint to the bottom of my soaps, but I am the only one using the soap so I figure it does not hurt anything. 😉

After 12 – 24 hours unmold and let cure for several weeks before use.

Observation: The bars are solid, but sweating a bit. The white that is seen in the finished soap is the salt evaporating out of the bar and then drying.

My surprise: the surface of the soap is smoother than when I have beeswax in the recipe.

Thank you,

Crystal
Dirty Water Soap Works