In a lot of my soap making groups and forums, lots of makers (and their customers) are obsessing over salt bars. So of course I had to look into it.
The benefits claimed are exfoliating and that it deposits minerals back into your skin. I can definitely see how the gritty texture would exfoliate, but I'm not too sure about the mineral deposit claims, I'll have to look into it more.
A salt bar is a simple recipe using mostly coconut oil with a high super fat. That means, once the oils have finished the chemical process of saponification, there will be leftover coconut oil in the soap bar that stays as coconut oil. This is great because soaps made with lots coconut oil and a lower super fat can be very drying on the skin.
So once you have your super fatted soap mixture, you're supposed to add fine ground salt. Like lots of salt. Like... I was hesitant to add it all when the time came!
They say to add anywhere from 50-100% salt, and after chatting with a few other soap makers, it seems like a majority prefer 100% salt. I was making a 1lb loaf of soap with 16oz of oils, so I added 16oz of table salt. I prepped some pretty molds with a bit of pink Himalayan salt and we went for it. Just dumped all that salt right in there.
The mixture was pretty thick and gritty as I mixed it, I added the salt at medium trace and just hand mixed to disperse it. Then added it to my molds. This is where I made a mistake... I'm so used to making soaps in wooden loaf molds, so I poured the soap into the silicone molds without putting them into a box first. So now that corner of the kitchen is off limits for the 4 year old until my soap hardens enough to put it into a box. Whoops!
Adding all that salt made these bars harden pretty fast, and within about 4 hours they were solid enough that I could pick up the molds and put them into a shoebox.
I gotta say, one thing soapmaking has taught me is patience. Although I do slip up sometimes... I may have pulled a bar out of the mold this morning that wasn't 100% ready to come out. It doesn't look horrible, but this bar is definitely mine. In my defence, the first bar I took out was perfect!
So I'll patiently wait 24 hours before unmolding the round ones, then let these cure for at least 4 weeks. Overall I had fun making these beauties, I didn't add any colour or fragrance, they turned a lovely white colour from all the coconut oil.
Next time, I would probably use less water in my lye mixture, it took me a long time to get to medium trace, but otherwise I am happy so far with the result.
I have this intrusive thought to lick one of them because it seems like it would be SALTY but I do know better...
So let's let these cure before I test them out, and if they're as awesome as everyone says then you can expect them to be added to my shop sometime in February.
Lindsay
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