Liquid soapmaking differs from the way we make our bar soap in several ways. Not only are the ingredients different, but the soap is created using a hot process method--in other words, it's cooked. The oils and potassium hydroxide are stirred together in a crock pot for about five hours (the only thing Dick trusts me with so far!) until it looks like vaseline:
At that point, this soap "paste" is dissolved in water and voila! you have liquid soap. Sounds pretty simple, no? Well, for our first batch we followed a recipe we found online (after Dick had studied just about everything you could possibly learn about liquid soap). Everything looked pretty good, and we got a beautiful, clear soap with only one problem:
Not really the consistency we were going for (although there just might be a huge, untapped market for jello soap out there). It does work very well on dishes, though.
Batches two and three are still in the testing stages, but we modified the same oil blend we use for our bar soaps and are much happier with the results. Keep your fingers crossed.
