Whoduhthunkit!?

As ya’ll know sometimes I go all artsy tree hugger and make something touchy feely back to nature kinda olde school. It was lavender and glycerin soaps not too long ago…yesterday it was a huge pot of homemade turkey soup (and given the date you expect a "but of COURSE you did." from my husband who knows I loathe waste). Today I tackled real live olde fashioned lye soap. You know - the kind our pilgrim foremothers made whilst sweating their beet farmer a$$es off over a caldron. Lye from wood ash, rainwater, lard, blahg blahg blahg - soap. Sometimes I just like to go as far back as I can with a process and see where it started. Don’t ask why even I don’t know.

So I actually went and started with lye and fats and made some soap and I thought I’d share the experience.

First - working with lye is both dangerous and intimidating. Knowing that you can cause a volcanic and violent eruption if you combine the ingredients in the wrong way AND knowing that the SPEW it generates could burn your eyes out and skin OFF…well let’s say I handled this step with every attention to detail, utter focus, and a great deal of respect:

Lye water - result of mixing 100% lye crystals with rainwater (or distilled water). I did it right and hot DAMN they weren’t kidding about the chemical reaction - this $hit rocketed to over 200 degrees fahrenheit as a result of being mixed together. It got an honorable seat in the garage - middle of the floor - far away from anything I cared about.

While the lava juice cooled down to a mere 100 degrees fahrenheit I gathered the main ingredients - namely lard and oils, as well as my equipment - scale, thermometers, spoons, measuring cups…etc. I also changed my drawers…

I know - hip kitchen. Note the official looking chart of ingredients. This is a chart, of ingredients measured to the 100ths of a gram or ounce. This required an electronic/digital scale. Still waiting for the lye water to reach tolerable levels I measured out all the fats and oils and began the process of melting down the solids and combining that with the liquid oils:

Yummy! Once this all melted, I combined the liquid oils (I used safflower, sweet almond, extra virgin olive, and peanut as my liquid oils - coconut and lard as my solids.) I was driving for rich silky lather rather than bubbly. Believe it or not someone took the time to figure out what kind of lather you get out of each different type. And I though I was anal retentive. I just went with what they said and designed my recipe based on how I wanted it to act. Then, since the lye was still roughly 150 degrees F I went ahead and measure out all the additives - essential oils for scent (who the hell wants soap that smells like the fry vat at the golden arches?) and herbal frou frou (lavender buds).

OK now the solids are melted, I added the liquid oils and that whole can o’goods was up near 125 degrees F so I had to let that cool down as well (both items - lye and oils, need to be roughly 100 degrees for this to work. Remember we are trying to mix oil and water here basically). So while I wait I multitask yet again - line the mold that you will poor your glop into (which will let your glop sit and harden into, you guessed it, SOAP.) I want rectangle bars so here’s my rectangle mold lined with black plastic:

Ah the lye and the oils are ready so it’s back into the kitchen, this time with the Kettle o’Doom and I slowly pour the lye into the vat of fats and oils…then proceed to mix thoroughly with an electric hand mixer (A must have unless you feel like doing the broomstick in the caldron routine for hours).

You have to mix and mix and mix until the chemical reaction of lye on the water and oil together causes them to suddenly BLEND and begin to be soap. No bubbles yet because it’s not SOAP yet but the molecules are binding and the process has begun. It’s called tracing at this point, meaning that if you dribble a bit back into the pot it leaves a trace behind to show where it’s been:

Once that occurs you are free to add the scent and frou frou, blend some more and voy-oh-lay - it’s ready to cure and become SOAP:

Into the mold:

And it’s four weeks while it settles, and then saponfies (which I have used my decoder ring on and it says that to saponify means to turn into soap basically - so you get bubbles instead of a greasy mess when you hit the showers with it).

So in four weeks we’ll see how it went. Now it may be a bit wierd for you but it was kind of enlightening for me to see how not easy yet not too hard it was either. The lye is the freaky part but other than that…I have to wonder who decided to try this the first time and how they figured out it should work.

Sometimes mankind floors me.

Hope ya’ll had a great Thanksgiving! Me…I’m beat! Shoutatchalater..