Making Soap

I’m really not opposed to buying soap from the store, but I get satisfaction in understanding the process of how to make it and also in doing it “my way”. Also, I get an amazing amount of soap from a short stint in the kitchen! I like just following directions and recipes rather than trying to figure out proportions on my own, so I used this book in this project:

Here I am just mixing up the lye into the raw milk that I prepared (by heating, then freezing, then thawing). I had to keep it stirred and even in the ice bath, the temperature never fell below 93 degrees. Amazing how that lye works! I did not even attempt this with my 3 or 5 year old around; it’s too dangerous for “oopsies“.

Once all the lye was stirred in (and it took 15 minutes of slooooowly adding it, so as not to scorch the milk), I put the pot onto the floor and added my melted fats/oils. The book gives directions for two separate blends in a standing blender using small batches. No way! First of all, I was working alone. Second of all, I have a handy-dandy hand-blender. And perhaps more importantly, toddler naptime just isn’t long enough for that!

After a minute of blending, I also added ground oatmeal, dried orange, and neroli essential oil. I think I need to add a lot more essential oil next time as the heat evaporated some of it. The mixture “traced” pretty quickly, easily within two minutes. That means the mix left a thickened trail, as you can see here:

I carefully poured the mix into my soap boxes. Notice that I had no freezer paper on hand (to line the boxes with) and so just put the mix in without it. BIG mistake. It meant that 24 hours later, when it was time to remove the bars and cut it, I had to sacrifice a bit of it to get the rest out. Ah well. I was too lazy to remelt my sacrifice bars and just threw it away.

Still, it didn’t come out too badly. I got two full trays of cut bars out of a single recipe, and as you can see, that is a lot of great soap! They are all down in the basement curing now for six weeks, after which they will be ready to use. How much do you think “all natural milk bars with oatmeal and orange” go for? Our store sells bars like this for at about $4 each. So guess how much I saved…

As you can see, making soap isn’t so scary. It’s actually kind of fun!

Blessings,

Tagged as: homesteading, tutorials