Lucky you!
Lucky you ... ?
Recently, I'm focusing on bare-minimum soap: no coloring, no scent, no additions. For my hippie granola friends with kids, or who themselves are trying to cut out unnecessary froufrou smell-um from their lives.
Hot process is perfect for this, because none of the drawbacks apply here. To me, the drawbacks of hot process include lack of ability to do intricate color patterns, lack of ability to put it in a precise mold (you can get a general shape -- cylinder, square, etc. -- but molds with detailed designs come out moofitty).
And the benefits include the ability to get a complete batch, ready to go, in a day or two, and it's much more "forgiving" in terms of getting it out of molds (I've just been plopping it into a cardboard cereal box; when it cools, the cardboard peels away cleanly).
So anyway, here's the tutorials that taught me hot process soap. It's really easy ... to me, easier than cold process because what you see is pretty much what you get:
- Crock pot method My preferred method -- I have a 7qt slow cooker, which I fill with water in which floats a smaller ceramic bowl containing the soap -- good for 1-2lb batches, easy clean up, no fears about ruining the crock pot insert, although experience has taught me I don't really need to be worried about that since the soap, when soaked, just makes soapy water, but I totally understand the desire not to potentially ruin a small appliance with a first-time soapmaking adventure.
- Improvised double boiler method Great pics of the various stages of saponification in this one. Gotta watch that it doesn't foam over. Depending on the ingredients, some batches want to jump for joy, and then you have a huge mess.
My one piece of advice would be: depending on the recipe, you soap may never get to the total-gel phase depicted in the photos, or it may pass through the phase very quickly. So you can't always go by that. Generally, when it becomes a held-together solid-ish gel-like mass, it's ready. I know that description is not very helpful, and all I can say is, try a couple batches and you'll develop a sense for the sweet spot.
The good news is, at least in my experience, you can't really over-cook a batch of hot process soap. I mean, sure, you could leave it over heat for more than an hour, and it might start to break down (?? I don't know, it's never happened to me, and I am one sloppy negligent soapmaker). But it's not like cooking souffle or a pancake; hot process soap is pretty durable and willing to put up with a wide range of abuse.