Making Soap

I mentioned a while ago that we rendered lard to make soap. The lye arrived recently so we have given it a go. It is currently drying for 3 weeks before we can try it.

This is the recipe we used

600g lard

80g lye (sodium hydroxide)

228g water

1tblsp lavender oil

We used the cold process method. I won't go in to detail here as there are a lot of sites better qualifed than I to describe how to do it.

Basically though we warmed everything a bit and then mixed it all together and blended it with the stick bender for about 10 mins until it thickened a bit at which point we poured it in to moulds and left to set overnight. After which we popped the set soap out of the moulds and have left to set.

Lye is strongly caustic so lots of the instrutions involve how to handle it safely. Having read them all I expected a small explosion when I added the lye to the water. The water did heat up quite a lot, but nothing dramatic. Disappointment! But relief too!