Hot Process soap

When in a hurry for some natural quality hand made soap, hot process is the way to go. While cold process can take up to a month to cure, hot process soap is ready as soon as it solidifies and cools to room temperature. Although some soapers use a double boiler as a method to heat the traced soap mix, I prefer a crock pot on LOW setting. The soap initially expands as the saponifacion completes. This rising is easily controls buy gentle stirring. Afterwords, the soap gets somewhat translucent as it enters the "gel phase" this is when the saponification is complete and the pH has dropped to 9 or 9.5. For the novice it is tempting to take out the soap , add fragrance and color, and put into the molds. But there is one more stage that the soap needs to go through. The last stage is a dehydration stage where the soap thickens somewhat to a mashed-potato consistency. This stage ensures that you get a hard soap that does not require more than a week to dry out. Here is a delicious Sandalwood/vanilla soap that I made on February 8th. I have some bars left and you can find them at http://www.indysoapmaker.etsy.com. They

are listed as "Calming Lather".