Once the soap has reached
trace you'll need your next measure of patience. Give the soap one more good stir, shake off your stick blender, put the lid on the pot, and start waiting.
Check on the soap in about 15-20 minutes. If there's any separation, just stir it back up and put the lid back on. Keep checking on the soap every 20-30 minutes or so.
In the 3-4 hours or so it will take this soap to cook, it will transform and go through several "stages" - don't worry if you don't see one, sometimes a stage will be brief and you'll miss it. The "stages" I usually see are:
- Thick applesauce
- Cooked custard with small bubbles
- Watery mashed potatoes
- Solid taffy
- Chunky/creamy vaseline
- Translucent vaseline
Keep stirring every 30 minutes or so through each of the stages. It will be difficult (or even darn near impossible) to stir through the taffy stage - do the best you can. The potato masher will help break the taffy up. Then, just when you think it's never going to finish, it will start to get creamy and move into the vaseline stage, getting more translucent.
