Running a Bath & Body batch

A batch walks you through a recipe step by step, records what you noticed as you go, and — when you finish — draws what you used out of your pantry and starts the clock on whatever the product needs to cure, harden or rest.

Starting one

Open the recipe and tap Start a Batch. That opens a Step 1 · Production batch setup screen first; the run isn't created until you confirm.

How many batches are you making? is the main control — Hi Ellie scales the recipe to that count and shows what the whole run will use before you commit.

This is also where a lotion or an emulsified scrub meets its preservative requirement — the recipe saves without one, but the run is refused here. Which sentence you get names the gap:

Nothing picked — "This lotion has no preservative selected — it can't be made as a batch until you add one to the recipe" (and the same for an emulsified scrub, in its own words).
Picked, but your pantry no longer carries it or it has no usable rate — "This recipe's preservative has no usable dose rate on file — set its effective rate in your pantry before making this batch."

Either way the fix is on the recipe or the pantry row, not here; a saved recipe in that state is not a runnable one.

The safety reference

Before your first Bath & Body run, Hi Ellie shows you the craft's safety reference to read and acknowledge. It's not a checkbox on a warning banner — it's a short document covering working with lye, dusts and powders, knowing a batch is finished, handling fresh bars and curing, water and hygiene, and skin limits for fragrance and colour.

You acknowledge it once, by version. When the document is revised you get a shorter re-acknowledgement rather than the whole thing again. There is no path around it: the run-start refuses server-side, not just in the form, so an API or voice start can't skip it either.

Resizing a run

Some products let you make a different amount without editing the recipe. Where the field appears it's labelled Resize this batch (oz) and pre-filled with the recipe's own figure, so you can leave it alone:

Scrub and lotion — the figure is the finished batch weight. Change it and every amount below is re-figured.
Liquid soap — the field is labelled total oils, because that's what it is: the weight of oils this batch saponifies, not the weight of finished soap. The lye, the lye-solution water and the dilution water all land on top of it, and the recipe page's dilution note carries those figures.

Enter a size and the fill count pins to 1 batch — you're making one batch at the size you typed. Clear the size to go back to whole batches and set how many.

A size outside the band the app sizes for (8 oz to 200 oz) is refused at the field with the reason, not silently clamped.

Working through the steps

One step at a time, with a counter so you know where you are, and the amounts scaled to your run. Add a note or a photo to any step as you go — it's far easier to record what you saw at the bench than to reconstruct it later. Each step is saved as you advance.

If your hands are busy, Walk me through it hands the walk to Bench Mode, which reads the steps aloud and takes voice commands. See Bench Mode.

Completing it

Completing does three things at once, all-or-nothing, and it cannot be undone:

Assigns the lot number.
Starts the clock — the recipe's own cure target for a cold- or hot-process bar, its hardening window for a bath bomb. A recipe with nothing to cure completes as ready.
Updates your pantry — the oils or base, lye, scent, colorant and bath ingredients you used are drawn down from the shelves they came from.

Read the deduction preview before you confirm. Anything on the recipe that isn't a tracked pantry item isn't deducted — only real shelf rows move.

A lotion batch asks for one more thing before it will close: the measured pH of the finished batch, on a 0–14 scale. Read it with a strip or a meter and enter what you actually read — this is the record of the batch, not a target. An emulsified scrub is not asked for one.

This cannot be undone. If the amounts aren't right, step back and fix them, or abandon the batch and start again. Abandoning ends the run without touching your pantry, and records it as abandoned.

After completion

The finished run appears in the recipe's Batches section with its lot code, date and status. From there the lot is what a printed label can carry — see Label Studio.

Tips

Weigh everything before you start. Especially anything with a lye solution or a cool-down phase — once the clock is running your window is short.
Use the notes field as you go. The batch history is only as useful as what you put in it.
For a from-scratch bar, re-check the lye weight against the recipe before you mix. The acknowledgment before the recipe saved was one check; the bench is the other. See Working safely with lye.