Lather from salt bars

[lenarenee]

So this could be a matter of technique instead of recipe! Going to investigate that.

 

[dibbles]

In thinking about this post, I took a salt bar into the shower today that was made on Oct. 18, 2017. The recipe is::

80% coconut oil
10% avocado oil
10% castor oil
17% SF
60% oil weight in salt (Fine Pacific Sea Salt from Costco)
30% lye concentration, with 1/2 liquid as water, 1/2 liquid as coconut cream
EO combination of lavender, ylang ylang, rosemary, and geranium

One thing I noticed is that the amount of water introduced to the bar played a big part in what the lather looked like. When I used my really wet hands to generate lather and allowed mist from the shower to spray lightly over my hands/soap while lathering up, the lather was really fluffy. But when I shook my hands out and blocked the shower from misting on the soap the lather got really creamy and more stiff-egg-white-like.

I have no doubt that the recipe/cure time plays a role in lather, but I also wonder if how the bar is used in the shower will contribute, too. It took my husband a couple of months to figure out the ideal amount of water to have on his shaving brush when using the shave soap I made for him so that he could get the really thick, creamy lather he wanted. That same shave soap could lather several different ways based on a few factors (water quantity, brush stroke speed, number of strokes, etc.)! So maybe there's an optimal way to use soap in the shower to also manipulate lather how one wants it?

This is true for me too. The pictures I posted were lather with quite a bit of water since I was only lathering each one for 20 seconds as a comparison between the two. Without adding more water but continuing to lather the soap, the lather gets more dense and lotion like. I like the big fluffy bubbles, so I keep letting water get in there.