I finally used the Castile soap I made -wait for it- 233 days ago. Or 7 months and 19 days. For those who don't know, Castile soap is soap made out of 100% olive oil only. This recipe/style originates from the Castile region of Spain.
Castile soap is a very gentle soap with little to no lather. It is described as 'slimy' or 'snotty' by many soapers. I have read that a long, long cure time can change this. I thought slimy and snotty sounded gross so I waited 7+ months before trying it. Well I see what they mean using those adjectives, however I am not opposed to it! It feels nice on my skin and the 'slime' factor adds some nice slip! The version I made was just olive oil, water and lye. No colors or fragrances.
Instead of Castile I did a Bastille. Bastille is a soapers term for a soap that is primarily olive oil, but has some secondary or tertiary oils to provide additional characteristics. Usually it is to create more lather. I went with cocoa butter and shea butter to make it more rich. Oh and Bastille= Bastardized+Castile.
I don't know if other soapers feel this way, but though I like to use lots of different fragrance oils and colors in the soap I give away, I get a little burned out on smell for my own personal products. There are only a few I can tolerate for daily use over a long period. One of them is peppermint, or rosemary mint combo. I used a rosemary mint fragrance in my Bastille.
I decided on a fragrance oil instead of mixing essential oils because I kind of wanted to use this up AND it smells amazing. It's from Wholesale Supplies Plus. It played very well.
I used about half and half light olive oil (like I usually use) and extra virgin olive oil. I wanted a butter yellow without adding any colorants.
I had a few cubes of coconut milk left and bulked it up with some buttermilk for my liquid. I used bead lye this time. I usually use Bramble Berry's flake lye, but I'm almost out. While investigating the different shaped lye recently, I read that a lot of people like the beads for milk soaps. Flake lye is harder to get and more expensive, I would like to transition to all beads eventually. Also I can buy them locally without paying for shipping (yay).
They seemed to work just fine. I used a silicone spoon with a good scraping edge to make sure I got all of the little beads off the sides and dissloved in the milk mixture. When I make milk soap the milk/lye solution usually ends up at about 70ish°F. This is pretty cold. Usually I'd make sure my oils were cooled too and just soap at room temperature. Soaps with lots of olive oil take for-ev-er to trace. Knowing that, I added the cool lye to 100°F oils, thinking maybe they'd firm up faster!
No dice. Tunes are required for long mixing sessions... I stick blended in bursts until the blender started to get hot.
While the stick blender cooled off I cleaned up. Ah Bastille, so slow you can do the dishes during.
Eventually everything was clean so I just let it sit for a bit. I could have poured it sooner I'm sure, since it was emulsified. But stubbornly I just wanted to bring it to at least a thin trace before pouring!
Finally! Thin trace trails!
Poured up.
I wanted this soap to gel, but it was kind of cool to get there on its own. I'm scared to CPOP (cold process oven process) since my oven doesn't go down to the desired temp. I thought briefly of using my cat's heating pad, but decided to crank up the oven and put the soap over the burner that vents the oven heat. The mortar and pestle are to keep the lid flat. I left it here for about a half hour before shutting the oven off.
Next morning I unmolded it. It was nice and firm, indication it went through gel. It did have some thin oil weep-age on the bottom and some small bumpies where it got the most direct heat. I turned the loaf on its side so hopefully the oil would absorb or dry out by the time I got home. I'm not concerned about the bumpies, but they definitely ARE from the heat since they match the burner!
Well the heat from the stove (which didn't seem very hot to me) must have been too much for the soap. When I cut this-very crooked I might add- it cracked and crumbled on the bottom. I would normally blame the cocoa butter, but I was well within the recommended levels.
Here you can see the dry crumbly texture is limited to the bottom of the soap, where it got the most heat.
They were mostly for my use, so the crumbles matter less... and they did turn out smelling great and just the color I wanted. I may try this again though. Because, why not!?
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