The process
Six steps. No shortcuts.
Aleppo soap is cooked once a year, in winter, and is not ready until the following autumn. Here is the whole year, step by step.
The winter press
Soapmaking follows the olive harvest. In December, fresh second-press olive oil arrives from the groves around Aleppo, along with laurel berry oil pressed in the coastal mountains.
Cooking the paste
Olive oil, water, and lye simmer in the copper kettle for three to five days, kept at a steady heat by the diesel burners that long ago replaced the old olive-pomace and wood fires. The master tastes the paste on his tongue — a faint sting means it needs another day.
Adding the laurel
Only at the end, off the heat, is the laurel berry oil folded in — anywhere from 2% up to 40% by grade. Added too early, its scent would cook away.
Pouring the floor
The green paste is poured over waxed paper across the workshop floor in one even sheet, then left to set overnight into a single vast slab.
Cutting & stamping
Workers on wooden boards strapped to their feet draw a rake across the slab, scoring it into cubes. Each cube is struck with the brass stamp of the house.
The aging towers
The cubes are stacked into open, spiraling towers in the stone vaults and left for nine months to a year. The outside cures to the soap's famous brass-gold colour; inside, the heart stays laurel-green.
A year later, it is soap.
Golden outside, green inside, and harder the longer it waits.
See the grades