New Recipe: Superfat Soap

So I'm going up in the world of soap making. I rented a few books and have learned a lot. This is the first recipe I made, instead of following from a book or blog post.

I'm especially excited to try this soap, because it should be very luxe and nourishing. I have terribly dry skin and I've received great benefits from making my own soaps already. The base of the soap is olive oil. I am currently still on my first batch of pure olive oil soap and loving it. Two additions I haven't added before are avocado oil and Shea butter. Both are very nourishing and both, she butter especially, are important due to their high content in unsaponifiable oils. This means, no matter how much lye may be added (that isn't a challenge by the way) part of these oils... most of the shea in fact, will not turn into soap. So essentially, a good amount of these rich oils will be left in the bar to soften the skin while you wash. Lastly, I added coconut oil back in 1) because I had it on hand and 2) because shea and avocado oil can soften the bar and coconut oil will harden it.


One of the books had tables of how much lye is needed per ounce of the different oils. So basically, you first decide hown many ounces of each oil you wish to have in the recipe, multiple each by the lye ratio needed, and then figure out the water needed. My recipe was developed as follows:

2 lbs 12.6 oz (44.6 oz) oilive oil
4.0 oz avocado oil
4.2 oz Shea butter
5.0 oz coconut oil

Lye ratio are given in ounces of lye per ounce of oil. Each fat or oil has its own lye ratio! The ones needed for this recipe were as follows...

Olive oil .134
Avocado oil .532
Shea butter .128
Coconut oil .190

So to calculate the lye needed....
44.6 oz olive oil x .134 = 5.9764
4.0 oz avocado oil x .133 = .532
4.2 oz Shea butter x .128 = .5376
5.0 ox coconut oil x .190 = .95

Total lye needed = 7.996

Now, I still don't understand how calculating the water works. Essentially you need so much water per each ounce of oil/fat in the recipe. The confusion comes in because the was one number for if the oil weight (combined) was less than 16 oz and another if it was greater than 32 oz. Since I didn't know what to do if the weight was somewhere in between the two, I just made sure my recipe weighed out greater than 32 oz!

Total oil weight = 57.8 oz
Ratio of water to oil if >32 oz of total oil= .377

So...

57.8 x .377 = 21.79 oz of water needed.

FINAL RECIPE:

44.6 oz olive oil
4.0 oz avocado oil
4.2 oz Shea butter
5.0 oz coconut oil
8.0 oz lye
21.8 oz distilled water

(remember all measurement are weight measurements)



I used both round and square mold and ended up with nearly 5 lbs of soap. Knowing that my very very small batch of olive oil castille soap has lasted about 3 months, this should last nearly a year. Now the aging process begins...
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:5th St NE,Rochester,United States