You can, but.. If you start with salt precipitation, it can be hard to filter (sometimes it doesnt settle nicely to decant), so doing a first base precipitation will make the first filtering a bit easier, and once you do the salt precipitation it will be cleaner to filter. I used to go straight for the salt, because I had my filtering tricks (vacuum, being patient, more than one filter/funnel at once, moving the bottom sediments once in a while, keeping a large liquid volume on top of filter to speed filtering due to gravity, etc), but a few people like gibran have brought to the attention that doing a first base precip helps, specialy if its lye, so I added to the wiki. Feel free to do as you please