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Hi Mallory, and to answer your question, yes soap made with commercial lye can be labeled as organic. It’s a bit of a tricky one, and a good question! Since all real soap requires lye in its manufacture, regulatory bodies accept it in organic soap recipes. Don’t get nervous over the word chemistry, either.
Fragrance oils that are not made for soap making tend to be heavily diluted and your soap will smell extremely bland. A lot of homesteaders make their own soap either for personal use or for selling them at the farmer’s market. Homemade soaps sell like hotcakes at the farmer’s market, especially if you know how to combine them with different fragrances and herbs. The biggest problem with making soap at home is that it contains lye, this is an alkaline corrosive agent which actually gives the soap its unique properties.
How to Make Your Own DIY Soap Without Handling Lye
It’s the milk fats that give milk soap its extra moisturizing oomph. These fats are left as “free oil” in the finished soap bar, making milk soap supremely gentle and nourishing to the skin. Homemade goat milk soap is a natural alternative to commercially sold shampoos. If you are ready to ditch the harsh chemicals and start to take care of your hair naturally, this DIY natural milk soap is a great start. If this craft feels a little out of your comfort zone, then you might want to know how to make soap with the melt-and-pour method.
If it says ‘beauty bar’ or something like that, then it’s probably a detergent. Laws dictate what manufacturers can put on their labels, but they’ll do their best to fool you. Let the soap in the mold for 24 hours, although the soap tends to become solid in just a couple of hours but it is extremely sensitive in the first 24 hours. Oftentimes people who do not wait enough and take out the soap from the mold will notice that the soap is crumbling in their hand. This is because the core of the soap is not solid yet, and this also depends on the size of the soap itself. My personal recommendation is to use fragrance oils which are actually made for soap making, you can find these at almost any hobby shop, both online or offline.
Quick Soap Making History
But you don’t need to have your own dairy animal. You can make milk soap from scratch with simple ingredients from the grocery store. Soap making is a wonderful self-sufficiency skill that anyone can learn to do, even if your homestead is a small lot in town. How do you wrap/package/store homemade soap?
But feel free to use olive oil, coconut oil, palm oil or castor oil in this goat milk recipe. I have been making my own laundry soap for a year and started making lye soap recently. My family members are jumping on the band wagon too and asking for these homemade items. So if anyone is considering trying homemade soap I say take a deep breath and dive in, it is so worth it.
Fill the mold
Knowing the potential negative impact of all of these ingredients commonly used in traditional soap, why wouldn’t you make the switch to all-natural soaps? All-natural soaps should not contain parabens, SLS, SLES, or triclosan. Make your own all-natural soap and then you really have control over which non-toxic ingredients are used. Oils in every soap recipe are chosen for a specific reason, to make a bar that is cleansing with good lather, but still moisturizing and conditioning to the skin. Substituting one oil for another can leave you with a bar that isn’t balanced. These places are pure gold for inexpensive soap making supplies.
You are using your hard-won skills and investing your time and money to create... If you plan to do a lot of hand milling, for rebatch, it’s worth investing in a grinder type vegetable and cheese grater or purchasing a Salad Shooter type appliance. Hand crank models can be purchased for about $25 while electric models are usually $35-$45. If you do a lot of re-batch work, it might be money well spent. I’ve been looking for ingredients to make with out lye.
If cold process soap is akin to making a cake from scratch, melt and pour soap is like making a cake from a boxed mix. Today, the cold process method is the most popular way to make soap from scratch. The cooked soap batter is spooned and squished into a soap mold, left to cool and firm up for a day or so, then removed from the mold and sliced into bars.
You can definitely make a larger batch if you have more lye water , just double, triple, or quadruple the same ratio of 1 cup oils to 3/8 cup of lye water. Have you ever wanted to try making soap the way your grandma used to? After all, what’s a self-reliant person supposed to wash themselves with?
There is no way for us to know how much lye is in the final liquid from wood-ash leaching so it may be weak, and won’t make soap, or very high, and it can burn your skin. Instead, we use potassium hydroxide and sodium hydroxide from soap making suppliers. The strength of each is controlled so you can predictably formulate and make gentle soap recipes.
If you’re making lavender peppermint soap, use one pound of soap base, 15 drops of lavender essential oil, and 15 drops of peppermint essential oil. Here’s how to make soap bars at home using the basic cold process soap recipe. It seems complicated at first, but it’s quite easy once you get started, and it’s a wonderfully rewarding hobby. When you introduce lye to fats and oils, it breaks the molecules apart and bonds with them, creating a new compound – soap! You can watch it happen when you’re making soap from scratch.
All of the homemade soap recipes on Savvyhomemade allow 5% superfatting. This ensures correct saponification making sure there is zero free caustic alkali remaining and a good ph balance is achieved. Some soap bases come scored, and others require you to cut them. In either case you’ll need about eight 1″ squares of soap base. Start by placing your cubes into a microwave-safe glass measuring cup. We don’t use wood ashes to make soap anymore, and if you come across a tutorial telling you otherwise, please don’t try it.
Also, the end result gives you soap bars with a smooth, even consistency, unlike hot process which produces more craggy and rustic-looking finished soap bars. With the hot process method, lye, liquid, and oils are cooked on the stove top until the saponification process is complete. Do you want to learn how to make soap from scratch? Cold process soap making method is what you’re looking for, friend!
To make a basic soap using hot processing, you will need lye, distilled water, refined coconut oil, shea butter, olive oil, and sunflower oil. Start by weighing your ingredients to the right amount and ratio, then combine your liquid oils and set aside. Melt the coconut oil and shea butter on the stove and also set aside. Now, prepare the lye by adding lye to room temperature water or cool water in a glass container; never add the water to the lye.
I’m fearlessly dedicated to creating tried, tested recipes & products that will work for everyone. I'm an experienced soap maker, skincare formulator, author, busy Mom of 3, and recently a Grandma! Welcome to SavvyHomemade, it's my true passion. Select your chosen oils, along with the weight or percentage. The soap calculator will then show the total weight of lye and water required. The result can be instantly adjusted by changing your preferred superfatting level or water/lye ratio.
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