After seeing thread after thread on SMF about salt bars, I had to try one. Many posters posted that they were their favorite bar and it makes their skin feel amazing. They are usually super high in coconut oil because coconut oil is well known for it’s lather and bubbles in salt water, where salt just kills the lather and bubbles of other oils. Since coconut oil is also quite drying, you use less lye in these bars to allow more unsaponified oil to remain in the bar, called superfatting (which you do for most soap anyway, but these bars get even more). To mine, I used mostly coconut oil and added castor and grapeseed oil for even more lather and moisturizing. I did 17% superfat, and used 75% of the weight of the oils in kosher salt.
These bars need a long cure time for best results, but I used a tiny bit this morning (after testing to make sure there was no lye present of course) and it’s amazing already. It’ll be hard to wait 6 weeks for this one!
I’ve used the gardener’s bar from my last post and it is AMAZING. I added a little bit too much scrubby materials, but it works exactly how it should, scrubbing off dirt and moisturizing with good bubbles and lather and smells nice, even though I don’t usually like lavender.
My kids have decided they like my soaps too. My teenagers are exclusively using the coffee mocha HP bars I made from my first post, and they aren’t causing any issues with my son that previously could only use Ivory without going nuts from itchiness.
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