Soapmaking resources and books
Soapmaking Websites that I Love
Soapmaking Books that I Love
Simple & Natural Soapmaking
The Natural Soap Making Book for Beginners, by Kelly Cable (2017)
Both of these books are great for basic soapmaking information and step-by-step instructions with lots of beautiful photos, and some lovely recipes which you can follow exactly to create your own soap.
Soap Naturally, by Patrizia Garzena and Marina Tadiello (2009)
If you want to know more about the sopamaking process, without getting into too much detail, I found this book to be a fantastic starting point. It explains all the different oils and fats, colour, texture and fragrance options. Cold and hot-process soap methods are described in detail. It gives standard recipes and then explains how to devise your own recipes safely.
Milk Soapmaking, by Ann L. Watson (2009)
For more detail on working with milk/mylk and dairy products in soapmaking, this book explains the process and has several recipes to get you started.
Natural Soap Color, by Jo Haulauer (2016)
This eBook is available online at Lovin Soap and contains an explanation of some of the most common natural soap colours and how to achieve consistent vibrant colours.
Scientific Soapmaking: The Chemistry of the Cold Process, by Kevin M Dunn (2010)
This book explains in great detail how oils and fats react with caustic soda to make soap, how to test and standardise your soap and how different processing conditions affect the final product. You can following through different experiments in the book to see for yourself how different oils produce different soaps and how varying the caustic amounts changes the soap. I particularly appreciated the tips for making larger batches of soap and producing consistent results. The chemistry in the book is around highschool level. I'm not sure how easy it would be to follow if you hadn't studied university chemistry. I expect that you would need to dedicate more time to carefully reading the chapters to fully understand all the concepts. However I think the author has made an effort to explain most of it from scratch, assuming little prior knowledge of some fairly complex concepts (acid/base chemistry and organic chemistry).
What soapmaking resources have you found useful? Are you a chemistry geek or just like to follow the recipes?
(Links to Amazon below and in the text above are affiliate links, thank you for supporting my soap book habit by buying through my links, I get a small commission for each purchase)
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Great post.
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