Cold soap is easy to make from scratch and can be done quickly. It will take you no more than two hours. It all depends on the complexity of the recipe and the originality of your idea.
Soap makers have many ways to make soap beautiful, aesthetic and interesting. You can decorate it with swirls, stripes, inserts, add various fillers, pour into fancy shapes.
The disadvantage of this method is the duration of the soap drying process - it takes about three weeks. But if you are in no hurry, then you can proceed.
Step-by-step instructions for making soap from scratch
- Cover the working space (floor and table surface) with oilcloth. Get all your tools ready.
- Place the oils in different containers - put the solid oils in a water bath to melt (by placing a thermometer in the container), and let the liquid ones wait in a separate container.
- After weighing a glass or other container with ice or ice water, put it in the sink and turn on cold water. It is best to use a high temperature beaker and glass rod.
- Place the lye in a plastic cup and also weigh the amount you need. Then prepare an alkaline solution. To do this, gradually add alkali to the container with ice water, stirring constantly.
Now comes the most delicate phase of mixing the ingredients - bringing the alkaline solution and oils to a single temperature. The permissible difference between them is 2-3 ° C. The optimal mixing range is from 30 ° to 70 ° C, the most favorable is 40-55 ° C. The easiest way to achieve cooling is by adding cold liquid oils to the freshly melted solid oils - the temperature will drop. This is suitable if there was no wax in the solid oils. Otherwise, you will have to wait for natural cooling so that the wax from the sharp cooling does not freeze on the walls of the container. To cool the alkaline solution, place it in a container of ice water and add ice cubes there.
After reaching the desired temperatures, pour the alkali into the oil, stirring gently. The mixture should be cloudy.
Now armed with a blender, start whipping the oily composition. Gradually the mass will thicken. It is necessary to beat until you get a "trace" (5-15 minutes): ie. when the liquid, flowing from the blender into the container, leaves a trace on the surface - like a cream. Depending on the design of the soap, the quality of the trace must be controlled, that is, to achieve a thin, barely noticeable or thick trace.
After getting a trace, you can add all the additional ingredients to the mass - essential oils, dyes, additives.
Now take a prepared form and pour the soap mass there. Wrap the form with a towel and leave it that way for a day. You can put it in a warm, switched off oven. This recommendation is not suitable only for snow-white milk soap - on the contrary, it is better to put it in the cold.
After a day, your soap will harden, but the saponification process is still long to complete. Therefore, wearing rubber gloves so as not to damage the skin with alkali, remove the soap from the mold and cut into pieces. Place on a board or baking sheet and leave to ripen in a well-ventilated area for another 3-4 weeks.
Cold making soap from scratch is not difficult at all. Its only drawback is the long aging process of the soap until it hardens completely. But that shouldn't stop you. And for beginners, there are many ready-made soap recipes. Therefore, you do not have to resort to complex calculations with the alkali calculator.
