How to Make Bacon Soap

Step 8 Curing and Trimming

At this point what you have is really just fat mixed with lye. It takes about 2 weeks for all the fat to saponify and turn into soap. I covered the molds with plastic wrap and left them to dry above the kitchen cabinets so they wouldn't be disturbed. You can remove the soap from the molds after about a day but it still needs to continue curing before you can use it.

During this time the soap hardens, dries and loses a bit of its coloring. The white turned more white and the red turned to pink a little. The ph of the soap will drop from around 11 to around 9 or 8. You can test to see how your soap is doing by testing its ph with litmus paper, or just by giving it a quick smell. I could smell the lye after a few days but after the two weeks the caustic odor was completely gone. This process might take a little shorter or a little longer depending on your exact recipe and the drying conditions.

Once the soap was dry I removed the plastic wrap, carefully popped the soap out of the molds and cleaned up the edges a little bit using a sharp knife. I broke one strip of bacon taking it out of the mold, but everything else released pretty easily.