Perhaps you have often met the inscription 'soap with silk', 'silk soap'? Most often, this is not a marketing push of a seller who wants to insist on special properties of the product, it is a fact because you can add real silk fiber or cocoons in your soap from scratch when melting; these ingredients are hydrolyzed under the action of an alkali, separating into amino acids and silk proteins. Derivatives of silk give the soap caring properties — softening and conditioning.

Now I will introduce you not only to the process of soap making from scratch, but will also show this magic when silk cocoons give out all soft qualities.

I made the soft silk soap recipe in advance on a special 'soap' calculator.

To begin with, cover the working surface with paper, prepare instruments and means of protection for working with lye like gloves, a mask, goggles.

Weigh water according to the recipe.

Add silk cocoons into the water. Look how beautiful it is!

Weigh lye. Soft soap is melted with potassium hydroxide, solid — with sodium hydroxide.

Now pour the lye into the water with silk cocoons, stir with a glass rod. Watch this all dissolving right before your eyes!

Now put a glass with еру silk solution to cool down in a bowl with cold water.

Meanwhile, weigh palm kernel oil for your soap, start melting it.
The oil is lathering; composed with it, soap cleans softer than soap based on coconut oil.

Add castor oil to the palm kernel (foam stabilizing) oil and olive oil (for gentle cleansing).

Now you need to measure the temperature of the lye and oils solutions. They should be practically the same.

You can start mixing it all. Pour the lye and silk solution into the oil solution through a riddle to prevent undissolved particles of lye from getting in the future soap. Stir with a spatula.

Here comes your blender. Potassium soap needs more time to achieve the 'trace' step (when the mass becomes thick and homogeneous) unlike solid sodium soap. Having blendeв ше, leave the mass for 20 minutes, then mix again. Oil and lye are simultaneously exfoliating.

The soap mass begins to heat up quickly, it is the indicator of the saponification process.

I cooked soap by the hot method. Pour the mass in a device with the ceramic container for soap-making — Slow cooker.

Soap looks like this in 20 minutes. It is still not homogeneous, but it foams well, I tried.

After 30 minutes of cooking, the mass becomes more homogeneous.

Soap is usually cooked from 2.5 to 4 hours. After 3 hours of cooking my soap looked this way.

Check the readiness with PH strips: ready soap should not contain too much alkaline. A PH strip put into raw soap is painted purple, for ready soap it's dark green.

While beldi is hot, add so-called superfat (SF) which makes soap soft and is not reacted with alkali. Superfat protects and nourishes skin, does not allow soap to leave a feeling of dryness. I chose shea butter, weighed it, melted, added to the soap.

Add essential oils in the cooled beldy — jasmine, ylang-ylang, rose.

Ready! Can now be packaged in jars!

Very gentle caring soap!

It foams well and mildly cleanses skin!