Challenge – Sous Vide HP Soap
Hi everyone and welcome to this month's soap challenge ... HP soaping in a bag, or Sous Vide HP.
I think this is new (I have only seen soaps being melted in a bag for rebatching in the past) ... so it's a bit of a collective experiment as well as a challenge.
The idea is to create a soap that is fully saponified, so some of the more lye sensitive ingredients can be added after the cook. I want to swirl too, like I do with my cold process soaps, but without changing or adding to the recipe ingredients.
So the idea for this months challenge is to make a Sous Vide HP soap in at least two colors, and swirl them in the mold. Any swirl style and any number of colors are welcome. The choice of design is entirely up to you and how you choose to use this technique.
The Sous Vide HP soap technique:
Sous Vide HP Soap is a simplification of the original food technique. Making Sous Vide HP soap doesn’t require thermometers, vacuum sealers, immersion heaters or any other additional equipment. You can make Sous Vide Soap with the equipment you already have for soaping
The concept is to gently cook your soap in a water bath, using a plastic bag (that will double later as a piping bag) inside a jug or jar (I used plastic pouring jugs because the handle stays cool and it’s easy to move around).
The equipment that is required (other than the actual ingredients and usual safety equipment) are some BPA-free ziplock bags or roasting bags, some jugs or jars (for the plastic bags to sit inside) and any old pot to boil water in
The soap batter is made in the same way that cold process soap is made. If you are using an existing HP recipe, you might want to reduce the water (there’s no water loss with this technique).
Place the plastic bags into the jugs, and divide the soap batter is between them, and add colour and additives as you would for CP soap making … before the cook.
Once you have finished mixing your separated colors, press the air carefully out of the bag (it doesn’t have to be perfect, just get out as much as you comfortably can) and seal the bag shut.
The jug and it’s bag are placed into hot water (keep it just under a simmer, if you can see bubbles but they aren’t breaking the surface, that's about perfect!).
Two important things with this method:
1/ the water line must come up to the same level on the outside of the jug as the soap filled bag does on the inside (otherwise the top may be too cold to gel) and;
2/ insulate the top (I used jugs and teatowels, but canning jars in a canning bath would work perfectly, as long as the lid was not sealed closed - just catch the lid to the jar so there is no air pressure build up during the cook.)
Examples of Sous Vide HP soaps
I've had two attempts at this so far. Both have taken about ½ an hour to cook, with the first one being a few minutes longer because I kept taking it in and out of the bath to look at it and photograph it
Once the soap is fully gelled (it goes dark and gets up to about 85C, or around 185F, in the centre) it is brought out of the bath and is ready pour directly from the bag into the mold.
For my first batch I cooled the soap in the bag on my table, to see at what point it would start setting up. One thing I did think of is that the sous vide soap could be left in the water bath and cooled a little bit there (to avoid cold spots in the corners), but I haven’t tried that yet.
Anyway, these are my first attempts at Sous Vide HP soapmaking (I bet you can already tell I'm not normally a HP soaper!):
Key points:
1/ Use heat resistant, BPA free bags. I used #5 plastic ziplock bags, but tied off oven bags would also work.
2/ The water bath is kept at no more than a simmer, and the water must come all the way up the height of the soap.
3/ Don’t turn ziplock bags upside down – the soap will cause the seal to fail (upside – if you do have a failure, it’s in a jug, so it can be poured into a new bag without any trouble at all) … and yes, I have a photo of that
4/ Pour or pipe the soap hot, and if you are swirling, you will need to be reasonably quick - the starts to form a skin as soon as it begins cooling, which is quick.
If you would like to try the additive step (adding things after the cook), it would be terrific to see how that goes!
So … Aprils challenge is to make Sous Vide HP soap in at least two colors and blend them.
The basic rule of this soap is that the soap is hot process in a sealed bag, and piped or poured from that bag into the mold while it is still hot. Other than this, all colours, styles, piping methods, molds etc. are allowed.
Please take a photo of your process and a photo of your finished soap for the entry thread.
Background:
The idea of melting soap in an oven bag for rebatching has been around for years. This is a thread from 8 years ago on this very forum, talking about the different types of bags that can (should?) be used for rebatching this way.
https://www.soapmakingforum.com/threads/rebatching-with-an-oven-bag.17269/
Over at the spruce, there’s a lovely sequence of photo’s of the same rebatching concept, from just this year (including a piping photo):
https://www.thespruce.com/how-to-rebatch-soap-517103
During the soap dough challenge, we used ziplock bags to cure cold process soap.
https://www.soapmakingforum.com/threads/prep-for-february-challenge.68662/page-3#post-684574
(PS. Cleanup is a breeze )
Hi everyone and welcome to this month's soap challenge ... HP soaping in a bag, or Sous Vide HP.
I think this is new (I have only seen soaps being melted in a bag for rebatching in the past) ... so it's a bit of a collective experiment as well as a challenge.
The idea is to create a soap that is fully saponified, so some of the more lye sensitive ingredients can be added after the cook. I want to swirl too, like I do with my cold process soaps, but without changing or adding to the recipe ingredients.
So the idea for this months challenge is to make a Sous Vide HP soap in at least two colors, and swirl them in the mold. Any swirl style and any number of colors are welcome. The choice of design is entirely up to you and how you choose to use this technique.
The Sous Vide HP soap technique:
Sous Vide HP Soap is a simplification of the original food technique. Making Sous Vide HP soap doesn’t require thermometers, vacuum sealers, immersion heaters or any other additional equipment. You can make Sous Vide Soap with the equipment you already have for soaping
The concept is to gently cook your soap in a water bath, using a plastic bag (that will double later as a piping bag) inside a jug or jar (I used plastic pouring jugs because the handle stays cool and it’s easy to move around).
The equipment that is required (other than the actual ingredients and usual safety equipment) are some BPA-free ziplock bags or roasting bags, some jugs or jars (for the plastic bags to sit inside) and any old pot to boil water in
The soap batter is made in the same way that cold process soap is made. If you are using an existing HP recipe, you might want to reduce the water (there’s no water loss with this technique).
Place the plastic bags into the jugs, and divide the soap batter is between them, and add colour and additives as you would for CP soap making … before the cook.
Once you have finished mixing your separated colors, press the air carefully out of the bag (it doesn’t have to be perfect, just get out as much as you comfortably can) and seal the bag shut.
The jug and it’s bag are placed into hot water (keep it just under a simmer, if you can see bubbles but they aren’t breaking the surface, that's about perfect!).
Two important things with this method:
1/ the water line must come up to the same level on the outside of the jug as the soap filled bag does on the inside (otherwise the top may be too cold to gel) and;
2/ insulate the top (I used jugs and teatowels, but canning jars in a canning bath would work perfectly, as long as the lid was not sealed closed - just catch the lid to the jar so there is no air pressure build up during the cook.)
Examples of Sous Vide HP soaps
I've had two attempts at this so far. Both have taken about ½ an hour to cook, with the first one being a few minutes longer because I kept taking it in and out of the bath to look at it and photograph it
Once the soap is fully gelled (it goes dark and gets up to about 85C, or around 185F, in the centre) it is brought out of the bath and is ready pour directly from the bag into the mold.
For my first batch I cooled the soap in the bag on my table, to see at what point it would start setting up. One thing I did think of is that the sous vide soap could be left in the water bath and cooled a little bit there (to avoid cold spots in the corners), but I haven’t tried that yet.
Anyway, these are my first attempts at Sous Vide HP soapmaking (I bet you can already tell I'm not normally a HP soaper!):
Key points:
1/ Use heat resistant, BPA free bags. I used #5 plastic ziplock bags, but tied off oven bags would also work.
2/ The water bath is kept at no more than a simmer, and the water must come all the way up the height of the soap.
3/ Don’t turn ziplock bags upside down – the soap will cause the seal to fail (upside – if you do have a failure, it’s in a jug, so it can be poured into a new bag without any trouble at all) … and yes, I have a photo of that
4/ Pour or pipe the soap hot, and if you are swirling, you will need to be reasonably quick - the starts to form a skin as soon as it begins cooling, which is quick.
If you would like to try the additive step (adding things after the cook), it would be terrific to see how that goes!
So … Aprils challenge is to make Sous Vide HP soap in at least two colors and blend them.
The basic rule of this soap is that the soap is hot process in a sealed bag, and piped or poured from that bag into the mold while it is still hot. Other than this, all colours, styles, piping methods, molds etc. are allowed.
Please take a photo of your process and a photo of your finished soap for the entry thread.
Background:
The idea of melting soap in an oven bag for rebatching has been around for years. This is a thread from 8 years ago on this very forum, talking about the different types of bags that can (should?) be used for rebatching this way.
https://www.soapmakingforum.com/threads/rebatching-with-an-oven-bag.17269/
Over at the spruce, there’s a lovely sequence of photo’s of the same rebatching concept, from just this year (including a piping photo):
https://www.thespruce.com/how-to-rebatch-soap-517103
During the soap dough challenge, we used ziplock bags to cure cold process soap.
https://www.soapmakingforum.com/threads/prep-for-february-challenge.68662/page-3#post-684574
(PS. Cleanup is a breeze )
