Soap story

The reason I got into soap-making has nothing to do with thriftyness, or green or DIY living. It’s because I’m a sucker for a pretty package. In fact it doesn’t even have to be pretty. Some products are packaged in such a “natural” way that there’s little room for prettiness – and still these pull me in. The products I get a particular thrill out of seeing cleverly packaged are those that fall into the “lotions and potions” category – shower gel, hand lotion, and especially soap. Soap is such a useful product, too; shower gel and hand lotion I can live without (almost), but soap certainly has its uses. That’s why I bought a book from Amazon and set about making my own. As you can see, I’m still working on the packaging…

Making soap's just like cooking really. You take quantities of basic ingredients, mix them together, and then enjoy the results. You have to wait a little longer when making soap than you do, say, a cheese pie, to sample your endeavours however. But when you see your first bar of soap foaming up as you turn it over and over in your wet hands, it’s well worth it. And making your own soap does of course incorporate thrifty, green, and DIY living. It’s cheap to produce your own bars, no unnecessary chemicals or materials need be used, and you make it completely from scratch.

A very basic recipe for making soap involves just three ingredients: lye, fats, and water. There are lots of other ingredients you can add if you want your soap a little less basic, such as essential oils, bees wax, colorings, but these three ingredients are all that you need to make soap. If you've never used sodium hydroxide (lye) before then you need to know that it should always be handled with care. Wear rubber gloves and protective eye-wear when dealing with lye, and keep it stored away from children and animals - and anyone else who might be curious enough to know what it is! And before you ask, no, it's not possible to make soap without lye; there's no "safer" alternative.

Basic Soap Recipe (suitable for vegetarians)

Ingredients:

2oz (57g) lye

5oz (142g) distilled water or spring water

16oz (454g) vegetable fat (for the last soap I made, I used a 50/50 mix of olive oil and corn oil)

Equipment:

2 enamel or stainless steel pots

2 glass candy thermometers

Weighing scales (kitchen scales are fine)

Eye protection (DIY glasses or similar)

2 plastic spatulas for stirring

Old towel or blanket (to wrap soap once in mould)

Plastic mould (use what you can find!)

Knife for cutting the soap once it's hardened

Melt the fat in a pot. Use a stainless steel or enamel pot; don't use aluminum or iron as these will react with the lye, which you will add later. Once the fat has melted, turn off the heat and leave until the temperature settles at about 130 degrees F (54C).

In another stainless steel or enamel pot, place your water and then carefully pour the lye into the water. Put on your protective eye-gear and rubber gloves for this (and never pour water into lye or you’ll have an explosion on your hands!). Stir until the lye is dissolved. The mixture will give off a small amount of fumes, so be careful not to have your face too near and breathe in; it's best to do this in a well ventilated part of the house. Leave the solution until the temperature settles at about 130 degrees F (54C).

Then add the lye solution to the fats and carefully stir intermittently. After a while the mixture will start to thicken and then "trace" (leave a trace when it falls from the stirrer back onto the mixture in the pot). Once this stage has been reached, pour it into your mould. Don't worry if it takes ages for your soap to trace, sometimes when working with vegetable oils it can. If you've spent the best part of two or three hours stirring your soap every so often and it's thickening but not actually tracing, just pour it into the mould and it'll be OK. Wrap your mould in a towel or blanket for 24 hours, after which time the soap should be hard enough to cut (if your soap took a long time to trace it may not be hard until two or three days after having poured it into your mould). Whenever it is hard enough to cut, take your soap out of the mould and, wearing the rubber gloves (the soap will still be caustic at this stage so may irritate your skin), cut it into bars. Cover the bars and place them somewhere to "cure" (complete the saponification process) for six weeks before use.

Saponification occurs when an acid (fats or oils) is mixed with a caustic alkali (sodium hydroxide in the case of hard soap, also referred to as lye or caustic soda). When these two are mixed at a certain temperature, a process called saponification is triggered, the result of which is soap.

Once you've mastered this basic recipe you can experiment using different fats and oils, and then start incorporating other ingredients into your soap, such as fragrances, colors, and even fruit and vegetables.

Source: Melinda Coss: The Handmade Soap Book