Aleppo-style soap, 20 % laurel
A cold-process homage to the olive and laurel soap of Aleppo, at a middle grade of 20 % laurel berry oil. The laurel colours the bar green and scents it with bay, so it needs no fragrance, but it does need time: six months or more stacked to cure.
- Skill
- Intermediate
- Method
- Cold process
- Batch
- 1000 g of oils about 1398 g of batter
- Hands-on
- 1 h 10 min
- Cure
- 26 weeks
- Gel phase
- Either way gel or not, both work
What you need
For 1000 g of oils, which fills a 20 cm (8 in) square slab mould holding 1.5 litres. Weigh everything, liquids included.
| Olive Oil · 80.0 % | 800 g | 28.22 oz |
| Laurel Berry Oil · 20.0 % | 200 g | 7.05 oz |
| Sodium hydroxide (NaOH) · the lye, 100 % pure | 131.2 g | 4.63 oz |
| Distilled water · for a 33 % lye solution | 266.4 g | 9.40 oz |
- Superfat
- 4 %
- Temperatures
- Oils and lye solution at 38 to 43 °C (100 to 110 °F), warm enough to keep the laurel oil melted
Method
-
Get ready
Put on splash goggles, nitrile gloves and long sleeves, open a window or turn on the extractor fan, and keep children and pets out of the room. Set the slab mould level on a board so you can move it without flexing it. -
Weigh everything
Weigh 200 g laurel berry oil into the soaping pot and 800 g olive oil into a jug, then 266.4 g distilled water into a heat-safe jug and 131.2 g sodium hydroxide into a dry container. -
Make the lye solution
At the open window or under the fan, pour the sodium hydroxide slowly into the water, never the water onto the lye, and stir until it runs clear, keeping your face away from the vapour. Let it cool to 38 to 43 °C (100 to 110 °F), labelled and out of reach. -
Melt the laurel berry oil
Laurel berry oil is a dark green, buttery solid in a cool room that melts at about 32 to 36 °C (90 to 97 °F). Warm it gently in the pot until it is clear, stir in the olive oil and bring the oils to 38 to 43 °C (100 to 110 °F). -
Combine
Pour the lye solution into the oils down the shaft of the stick blender, tap the blender on the bottom of the pot to let out trapped air, and keep the blade under the surface while it runs. -
Blend patiently to light trace
Pulse and stir, over and over, for ten minutes or more if need be: a batter this rich in olive oil stays thin for a long time. Keep going past the smooth, even stage until a drizzle leaves a faint line on the surface; the room will smell strongly of bay. -
Pour the slab
Pour the batter into the slab mould, tap the board on the worktop to bring up air bubbles and smooth the top with the spatula. Lay a board or sheet of card loosely over it; it needs no towel. -
Leave it for 48 hours or more
Leave the slab undisturbed for at least 48 hours, and longer if it still dents under a gloved finger. Olive soaps come out of the mould soft. -
Cut it into squares
Turn the slab out onto a board with gloves on and cut it into nine squares about 6.5 cm (2.5 in) across, a small version of the Aleppo cube. -
Stamp each square
Within a day of cutting, while the soap is still soft, set your own stamp squarely on top of each square and give it a firm tap with a rubber mallet, as each Aleppo family presses its name into its cubes. -
Clean up with your gloves on
Wipe the raw batter off the pot and tools with paper towels, put them in the bin, then wash everything in hot soapy water. -
Stack them in an open tower
Build the squares into a hollow tower, three or four to a layer with gaps between them and each layer turned a quarter from the one below, so air reaches every face, as Aleppo's soap works stack their cubes. A rack works too, if you turn the squares every few weeks. -
Cure for six months
Leave them somewhere cool, dry and dark for at least six months, and nine if you can wait. The outside fades from green towards a golden tan while the inside stays green. -
Weigh a square to follow the cure
Weigh one square the day you cut it and again each month. While it is still losing weight it is still curing.
Tips
- Laurel berry oil is pressed or boiled from the fruit of the bay tree. Do not swap in bay laurel essential oil, a distillate of the leaves: it makes no soap, and its IFRA limit in soap is tiny. Some people react to bay; if you know you do, try a small piece before using the soap all over.
- About 4 % of laurel berry oil is not fat: some 3 % volatile oil, which scents and colours the bar on top of the superfat, and about 1 % unsaponifiable matter. Its lauric acid also varies with origin, so read the calculator's cleansing 4 and hardness 21 as a middle value; a high-lauric oil lathers more.
- For a stronger bar with a quarter laurel oil and a little rosemary extract against orange spots during the long cure, see our Aleppo-style laurel and olive bar, made in a loaf mould.
- Selling it in the EU or the UK? The cosmetics regulation prohibits oil from the seeds of Laurus nobilis (Annex II, entry 359). Soapmakers use the oil of the whole fruit, INCI Laurus Nobilis Fruit Oil, which that entry does not name: keep your supplier's specification for your safety assessor.
The oils
| Oil | Share |
|---|---|
| Olive Oil (virgin / refined / olive oil) | 80.0 % |
| Laurel Berry Oil | 20.0 % |
How it is made
| Process | Cold process |
| Alkali | NaOH |
| Superfat | 4 % |
| Water | lye water at 33 % |
| Iodine value | 82 |
| INS | 109 |
Why make it
This is a cold-process homage to Aleppo soap. The real one is cooked in cauldrons, poured on the soap-works floor, cut and stamped by hand and dried in open towers for six to nine months. A fifth of laurel berry oil adds a little lather to olive oil, cleansing 4 and conditioning 78 on our scale, along with a green colour and a strong herbal scent of its own, so the bar needs no fragrance. That makes a very mild, long-lasting bar for anyone who likes a plain soap whose scent comes from its oil. By tradition Aleppo soap is an everyday soap for body and hair, and bars with more laurel sell for more; that reputation rests on long use, not on trials. It asks for patience: six months on the rack at the least.
Sources
- Craftsmanship of Aleppo Ghar soap · UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage, 2024
- À Alep, avec l'accalmie, les affaires des savonniers reprennent · France 24, 2018
- The Laurel tree in Syria · A. Giuliani, International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI), 2005
What tradition, makers' experience and research say about soaps like this, each labelled for what it is. It is not medical advice, and no soap treats a skin condition: if you have one, ask a doctor or pharmacist.
What the numbers say
- Lauric acid 3.9 %
- Palmitic acid 14.4 %
- Stearic acid 2.4 %
- Oleic acid 62.6 %
- Linoleic acid 14.4 %
- Other 2.5 %
Saturated : unsaturated 21 : 79
Computed from the fatty acids of the fats above. The bands are what the craft has settled on, not chemistry — a bar outside one is not wrong.
From the guides
All guides
Aleppo soap and laurel berry oil
What Aleppo soap is, how the cauldron process differs from cold process at home, what laurel berry oil brings and why its SAP sits low, with recipes.
Castile soap: pure olive oil, and why it's worth the wait
What castile soap really is, why pure olive oil traces slowly and starts soft and slippery, how long to cure it, and a recipe with the calculator's numbers.
Curing and storing handmade soap
What curing does to cold process soap and what it doesn't, how long it takes, how to set bars up to cure, how to tell when they're done, and how to store them.
Guides with this recipe
Where these proportions come from
Olive oil with laurel berry oil, the laurel share being the grade printed on the bar: sold from under 5 % to 40 %, and 10-60 % in IPGRI's survey of the Syrian trade. Ours sits at 20 %, a middle grade. Written at a 33 % lye solution rather than 38 % of the oils, about 25 %, at which Dunn (The Water Discount, 2008) found pure olive soap separated in the mould. Aleppo's own soap is cooked in cauldrons and dried for six to nine months; this cold-process bar at a 4 % superfat is a homage to it, and the method is ours.