Most old civilizations have traditional artisan production processes that are hard to sustain in the modern world. Some cheeses in Southern France were sustained through government grants until EU regulations considered such support unsporting. Su filindeu pasta now only made by three people in Italy. As war ravages a country, even well sustained traditional methods become endangered. The civil/proxy war in Syria has displaced most if not all producers of صابون الغار (‘Aleppo soap’). While we may not be able to faithfully reproduce the exact process to create what may be the world’s oldest hard soap, I think it is important to preserve the knowledge of the process. The ingredients and proportions. The time and temperature of processing, how the soap is poured onto floors to cool and set whilst being walked on with wooden boards to flatten it out. How it is cut and stacked to cure.

In addition to documenting and preserving the process, derivative processes are developed to preserve some facet of the original product. Fact is, a lot of products are not protected by AOC, PDO, or any of the other “X has to be made in Y using the historic technique Z” regulations. Like the unfortunate not-Cheddar cheese that I find in many American grocery stores, Aleppo soap could be made with coconut oil and dye. And maybe that’s where the objection to cultural appropriation comes from — not an objection to someone respectfully trying to reproduce a cultural artifact but of someone bastardizing the artifact for profit or fashion. Reproducing sacred items for frivolity.

After reading about the displaced soap masters, I want to make a soap inspired by the Aleppo process. I need more experience with hot processing soap to follow the traditional long cook method, but I want to hot process the soap to control which oils comprise the superfat. Fully saponify the olive oil, then add the laurel berry oil and saponify some of it.

Then comes the actual recipe – the challenge with traditional soap recipes is that the saponification factor of ash varies. Buying sodium hydroxide yields a consistent product useful in recipes with precise measurements. Ghar soap recipes have percentages of olive oil to laurel berry oil, but more or less call for enough ash. I’m debating between five and ten percent superfat. Five percent seems fairly standard for soap recipes, so I’m leaning in that direction. But I wanted to continue researching authentic recipes before finalizing my ingredients.

I have tried many times to get swirls in soap. What I’ve actually gotten is halfway seized blobs of colour. Still works, still smells nice … but it doesn’t look like the pretty soaps I see online.

Everything I’ve read says to mix the components to a light trace so it won’t seize before you get it poured and swirled. Many attempts later, I have swirls! Two tricks — I mixed the essential oil into the oil before adding lye. Adding the EO after the oil:lye is mixed was just too much mixing. I also used more water than the normal 2:1 water to lye ratio.

Added the lye water to the oil/EO mixture and used the stick blender until it was just combined. There were no longer oil spots floating on top, the entire mixture was a homogeneous colour. I split the soap into two pots and stirred in the clay with a tiny whisk. At this point, I still had REALLY runny soap.

I used a modified column pour technique — a rounded cup in the middle of a large mold. This made concentric rings of colour. I then used a very thin wooden dowel / gigantic toothpick that was used in a sandwich at a local restaurant and dragged lines from the perimeter of the mold into the center. The shape held! Popped the whole thing in the oven with the light on and let it sit for 24 hours. Removed it from the mold and it was really soft compared to my normal recipe. That’s the extra water – it needs to cure longer. Bonus, though – it was soft enough to cut easily with a knife.

When cut into bars, there are actual swirls!

We’ve made a bunch of new soaps this past week — mostly using the same 20% super-fat all coconut oil recipe, although I made a 0% super-fat coconut oil soap to use as laundry detergent. We just have to visit some store that actually stocks washing soda (WalMart – not somewhere I frequent, but according to their web site … it’s stocked at every local store here).

We made a rainbow swirl soap with orange essential oil — important thing about making rainbow swirl soap? Don’t try to smooth out the top! The whole top is a consistent lavender colour … cool, though, because the rainbow bits appear as you use the soap. Totally not what I was going for, though.

Another swirled soap using activated charcoal and green zeolite clay with tea tree essential oil. Again the swirl didn’t turn out the way I wanted … I think you’ve got to have really fluid soap batter to get these swirl techniques to succeed. This batch was less thick than the rainbow above … but it still got gloppy as I poured it. Also – there’s a reason the ‘column pour’ technique has a square in the middle. If you use a round object (say, a glass that you happen to have and know won’t be harmed by soap) , you get concentric circles. Not a design with scallops to it.

And I’ve found a few new recipes that I’d like to try — one is using pureed cucumber in place of water in the soap. And one that’s got to wait for next year — using daffodils as the colourant!