Have you heard of Beldi soap? It's also called Moroccan Black Soap, made of 100% olive oil and black olive paste. It is used in Moroccan bath or Hamam Maghrabi. It starts with an overall rinse, then smear black soap all over your body, followed by sitting in a hot steamy room for awhile until your pores all open up. Then someone will take a scrubby sponge and scrub the heck out of you, LOL It is then followed by a body mask to detox. The whole process takes about an hour. Your skin is supposedly like baby soft again.
Anyway, I tried making Beldi soap the other day, except I used herbal infused olive oil and fresh rosemary puree instead of black olive paste. Beldi soap uses potassium hydroxide to saponify oils, same process as making liquid soap. The only difference is it stays as a paste and not diluted with more liquid to form final liquid soap.
I used glycerin method to avoid cooking. It's very fast, done within 10 minutes. Glycerin method is by using glycerin in place of water to dissolve potassium hydroxide. This method requires no cooking, no additional external heating required.
Usually after I saponified my liquid soap using glycerin method I would let it cool down on the counter. By the time it's cool enough to touch it's pretty much thicken to a sticky paste consistency. I store the paste until I need soap then I'll dilute is with hot distilled water. But when I did the same to my Beldi soap it didn't get thick like my normal liquid soap. Over night it actually stayed jelly like but got really shinny!
I'm thinking it has a lot to do with the puree rosemary I added that made the soap more like jelly than sticky paste. Jelly is definitely easier to apply on skin than sticky paste, I'm not complaining!
