Review: Super Soap Making Book

Soap is a very mundane object. It’s there in our markets and bathrooms, usually in a sensible white shape with a non-offensive smell. We either ignore it until we smell ourselves, or we are so fixated by it that other people’s coughs seem to cover an insult. Soap is soap. Nothing more, nothing less.

That is, until you start looking at soap with eyes untainted by its banality. If you really look at soap, you’ll find one of the greatest inventions of man. It didn’t move the world. It didn’t set anything on fire (ok, one of the ingredients of soap can set water on fire but that’s something else entirely). What it did was, it cleaned up a lot of messes and it prevented the worst germs and bacteria from killing more people than it should.

It takes a fine book to make soap good as new. That book is Sandy Simmons’ The Super Soap Making Book. It’s a lovingly crafted piece. The author obviously loves the craft of making soap. She’s very practical about it though. For her, soap seems to be equal parts art, science and business. With a lot of soap making recipes thrown in.

This is a very thorough book. It discusses everything about soap. The author begins with soaps origins in myth and legend. It mentions a little tale about Mount Sapo, where soap “originated”, and the existence of ancient clay Mesopotamian soap containers. It traces soap’s history through the ages until the rise of commercial soap gets us to the present day.

The bulk of the book comes next. This is truly a book that looks on soap making as a craft. There are pages upon pages dedicated to answering one question: How can I make soap? It begins with simple soap recipes that use the melt-and-pour method. It ends with even more recipes using ingredients and methods that a beginner shouldn’t approach at all. It walks us through the length and breadth of procedures, ingredients and equipments. Apart from the melt and pour method, you’ll be introduced to the hot process and cold process methods, the dangers (but necessity) of lye, soap bases, essential oils, colorants, stick blenders and a whole lot more.

Simmons’ book encourages experimentation. Entire chapters were made just to teach readers how to make custom soap or how to make their own soap recipe. It also encourages soap makers to get others into soap making. It has a chapter for children’s soaps that would leave your kids enthralled with the soap making craft.

It also has lots of words of wisdom. The book reminds people to wear safety gear when handling dangerous chemicals, particularly lye. It has an absolutely useful guide for troubleshooting when the soap doesn’t turn out perfectly. Tips and tricks are liberally given in the book.

But the book doesn’t stop there. It wants you to profit from soap making. Not only does it teach you how to make soap, this book teaches you how to set up a soap making business. Each step of entrepreneurship is articulated succinctly. Becoming a successful soap entrepreneur doesn’t seem so hard.

This book is totally worth it. It transforms the mundane soap into an object of wonder. But that’s not its greatest trick. It also transforms you, the reader, into a soap hobbyist and entrepreneur.