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Friday, September 13, 2013

Dead Sea Facial Soap

This is my most time consuming soap ever...
Why?  Because it's made with 72% olive oil, organic brown egg, and real Dead Sea Mud (not powder).  It takes at least 9 months to get ready, I only do this once a year.
First step, I have to infuse botanicals such as calendula, chamomile, lavender bud, willow bark, mint, and green tea leaf in olive oil for 3 months.
The making of the soap itself is pretty standard except the part I have to temper the egg (both yoke and white) with the soaping oil before mixing with lye solution.  The final stage is the curing.  High olive oil soap needs longer curing time.  It's like wine, the older the better.  I have to confess, I don't like Castile soap (made with 100% olive oil).  Soap made with high % olive oil tends to be slimy, it produces less suds then let's say soap made with coconut oil in the mix.  And it has this slimy stickiness after wash.  Nevertheless, it's well known for its mildness to our skin.  Facial soap doesn't need to have lots of lather, but it needs to be mild, olive oil is by far the best choice in my opinion.  In order to cut down the slimy stickiness I compromised with a bastille soap recipe of my own.  Bastile is soap made with 72% or more olive oil mixed with other oil or butter to boost lather.

4 comments:

  1. Wow, that looks amazing. I'm impressed with all the work that goes into it.

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  2. I always get bubbles and lather mixed up. Love olive oil soap for the face and yours is so pretty and full of all that is good! Lovely!

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  3. Wow! What a skin-loving soap. I can see why it takes so long. =)

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