I've been wanting to make soap for quite some time. My SIL demonstrated to a group of us how she makes it and she was all about using the thermometers and making sure everything was exactly specific temps when she made it. Extremely time consuming.
Now I'm confused because I just read an article on soap making and it seems so much easier. No bothering with thermometers and exact matching temperatures. This article said to put the lye mix directly into the oil mix and then mix with a wand mixer. Is it really that easy? If I didn't have to wait around for mixtures to get to specific temps I might try this recipe over the weekend.
I have been making soap since 1983 & yes if you are using the pre-made soap slabs than you remelt & add things to its very easy but with using lye, oils, tallow ect the reason for the temp is that if the lye is too hot or the oils.lard is too hot the cool down time is longer & you are there forever stirring it...plus too hot lye with warm oils/tallow/lard can change the structure of the fats so that when the soap is done you have too much lye in the soap left & you get burned using it....as for added powdered lye to the oils instead of the water you may get clumps of lye that do not dissolve even with the wand mixer...happened to my sister & whole batch had to be reground & re heated to dissolve that lye...I now know by touch when both lye & tallow/oils ect are ready without using a thermometer but to be on the safe side use one. do you really want to have someone get burned by too much lye being left in the soap...I bet the woman who did this recipe has tons of experience & is comfortable with it but for someone new take the time to do it safe until you know exactly what you are doing...a bit of extra time won't matter in the end & no matter what you will find you enjoy it...Michele'
Chickens rule! The Old Batz Farm Hen #2622
Catherine L
True Blue Farmgirl
408 Posts
Cathy
Newton
Texas
USA
408 Posts
Posted - Nov 17 2011 : 09:45:16 AM
Tammy, I made the soap using the recipe from the latest MJF magazine and that is how it is made. I followed the recipe exactly as written and it worked wonderfully. It was very easy and didn't take long. I had two failures before this with another recipe in which temperature was stressed as important. Cathy
Question Regarding Soap Making
Posted - Nov 16 2011 : 10:10:10 AM
