Lard Recipe

[AliOop]

Thanks. I let my Aleppo soap cure for at least 6 months and a year is better, but most other soaps I make are cured for about 8 weeks before I sell them. I haven't made salt bars but it's helpful information in case I do try.

At least a few of us here on SMF find that single-oil soaps, or soaps that are made primarily of a single oil (e.g., 70% or more) tend to need a longer cure before they are nice to use.

Combinations of oils can become more than the sum of their parts once saponified. The one example that comes to mind is that they become a "eutetic mix" where the melting point of the mix is lower than its constituents. It's probably something analogous going on with curing mixed oils, rather than singles.

 

[Quilter99755]

Question about cure times - do you mean that bars made with lard or tallow need a longer cure time, or that all soap needs a longer cure time?

I found that 6-8 weeks cure made my lard soaps nice. But once I was able to wait longer, they became nicer. I think that generally it's the same for all soaps, but you do have to watch out for DOS and how you store them. I don't have a problem here but know others in various places have problems (humidity? contaminants?) And as others have mentioned, some soaps do require a longer cure time.

 

[DeeAnna]

Oh okay, my husband likes lather. If it doesn't bubble he doesn't like it !

Castor increases the water solubility of the soap so it makes lather faster with the same amount of effort. Castor also acts to strengthen the bubbles in the lather so the bubbles don't break down as quickly.

But castor in and of itself does not increase the amount of lather produced by the soap. If your recipe doesn't lather well without castor, it's not going to lather much better if you add castor.

For that reason, I'm another person who doesn't use castor. When I first started to make soap, I used castor because "everyone else did it". But I later became a bit skeptical and made several batches without. I couldn't tell the difference between soap with castor and without.

I think you have to experiment to know if it adds something to your recipes or not -- don't just assume that castor is a panacea without testing. Maybe. Maybe not.