HERB - Re: Help with olive oil soap?

[Gaylin Walli]

Henri and Antea wrote:

>I read on the net that olive oil is slow about tracing, and I guess
>saponification is just slow in general. How long would you let it cure in the
>molds before cutting and curing more?

Reliable reports that I've had from professional soapers and from what
I've experimented with myself indicate that it can take as long as
7 days for heavily olive oil soap to cure depending on the size of your
batch. The batch I just made last week was roughly 11 pounds of
ingredients with >50% oil took about 4 days to cure to the point where
I could safely cut it into bars. That's a long time. Most of the soap
recipes in books today run between 18-24 hours for the ingredients.

>I plan to mill it later and add some essential oils and milk.
>While milling it, would this be a good time to introduce lavender flowers
>into it for 'guest room' soap balls?

Absolutely. I'm assuming you're adding powdered milk? I've not known
liquid milk to work when added to a rebatched soap, but neither have
I tried it before. Adding more liquid to an already saponified soap
mixture means that you have soap and liquid, as far as I know.

But just thinking about how lovely some nice goat's milk or buttermilk
would feel in a milled soap. MMMm...yummy. I'm coming to stay at
your house. :)

Jasmine
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