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Bars are soft and dent under a thumbnail after five weeks of curing

Mostly patience, partly water. 60% olive makes a bar that is genuinely slow to harden, high-olive soaps famously want three months rather than four to six weeks, and a castile at 100% olive can want six months. At five weeks you're not at the finish line.

The water is the other half. 38% of oils is a generous amount, so there's a lot to evaporate. Next time try 33% or use a lye concentration approach at 33% and you'll get a firmer bar noticeably sooner.

Things that would speed it up as a recipe change: swap 10% of the olive for a hard butter or add 5% sodium lactate to the cooled lye solution. Sodium lactate in particular is the cheapest, most effective hardening addition there is.

578 · in/cold-process ·