Looking for a Beginner Recipe

[maggiedav]

Hi everyone! I'm new here and have never made soap, but have wanted to for about 1.5 years now. I read your posts all the time and love all the advice and pictures you share. I have all of my tools and ingredients (I think) to make my very first batch, but even though I've been researching for over a year, I'm still worried I'll mess it up. I have these oils on hand and was looking to get yalls advice on what percentages of each will make a good, moisturizing soap: Avocado, Palm, EVOO, Coconut, and Shea butter. I eventually want to make goat milk soap, but until I get the hang of it, I'll just use water. TIA, can't wait to get your opinions!

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

A good start could be 55% OO, 20% CO, 20% palm, 5% shea.

A lot of people don't put shea in soap as it can get quite costly and may not add too much to the finished product. Some people have a good (and cheaper) supply of shea and so it really depends.

Run the recipe through a lye calculator to get the amount of lye that you need - between 5% to 10% super fat is best for a first batch so you have room for errors. Closer to 10% if you're not sure about how things will go with measuring and so on.

Most importantly - have fun! It's a great hobby

Edit - but I'm no expert, so someone else might be able to give you a better option

 

[maggiedav]

Thank you! I love Shea butter. I add it to my goat milk MP. It's probably all psychological, but it makes me feel like it helps my extremely dry skin, just a bit more. No to the avocado as well?

 

[Obsidian]

I don't bother with shea in soap anymore either, it might help your skin if you add it to M & P but its different in CP. I would do
60% OO, 20% palm, 10% CO and 10% avocado. I'd also suggest making your superfat 8%-10% if you have dry skin.

Keep in mind when using EVOO that it will make your soap a greenish color. Most people use pomace or plain OO, its cheaper and doesn't discolor your soap.

 

[maggiedav]

Thanks for the advice! It didn't cross my mind the evoo would make it greenish.

 

[EvilTOJ]

This is as simple as you can get, and it makes for a good all over soap recipe. It's a good recipe to get the process down.

11 oz lard or bacon fat
1.4 oz lye
3.6 oz water

It'll give you about 3 bars of 4 oz soap. It's cheap and if you ruin it you haven't wasted a lot of money making it.

 

[new12soap]

Using those ingredients a good beginner recipe would be

40% Olive
40% Palm
20% Coconut

and 5% superfat

I have dry *cough* mature *cough* skin and I almost never go higher than 5% unless I am using all coconut oil. Higher superfat will decrease your lather, this is a good basic recipe to learn technique and then you can go from there using different oils and additives and superfat levels.

 

[judymoody]

50% oo, 25% po, 25% co, 8% sf.

 

[maggiedav]

Thank you all for the suggestions! I'd say I've got several things to experiment with now