What Does “Superfatting” Mean in Soap?

When I talk about my handmade goat milk soap, you may hear me mention that it’s superfatted. It sounds a little technical, but the idea is simple: superfatting means leaving a small amount of nourishing oil or butter in the finished soap.

Soap is made when oils and lye come together in a process called saponification. The lye transforms the oils into soap and glycerin. When I superfat a recipe, I use slightly less lye than would be needed to turn every bit of oil into soap. This leaves a small percentage of unsaponified oils behind in the finished bar.

That extra oil helps give my soap its lovely, creamy feel. It can make the bar feel less harsh and more comfortable on the skin, especially compared with highly cleansing soaps that remove too much of the skin’s natural oils.

Superfatting is one reason handmade soap feels so different from many commercial cleansing bars. Along with naturally produced glycerin and the carefully chosen oils in my recipes, it helps create a bar that feels rich, gentle, and satisfying to use.

There is a balance, though. Too little superfat can make a bar feel overly cleansing, while too much can reduce the lather, make the soap softer, or shorten its shelf life. That’s why I carefully formulate and cure each batch before it reaches you.

My goat milk soap is made to be enjoyed as part of a simple, comforting routine. It creates a creamy lather, rinses clean, and leaves my skin feeling fresh without that tight, squeaky feeling I try to avoid.

So when you see that a bar is superfatted, it means I’ve intentionally left a little extra goodness in the recipe, one small part of what makes handmade soap so special.