An Old Craft is New Again: Making Soap

Not me, thank goodness!

In the Colonial era, when the Province of Maine was a part of Massachusetts, the making of soap was a household chore and thus a commonly known skill. Soap was made by boiling animal fats with lye obtained from wood ash to produce the saponification reaction. Women, mostly, were the producers if soap for their families; there were also tradesmen called chandlers (because they also made candles) or soapboilers from whom one could purchase pre-made bars.

These days, of course, soap is readily available and affordable, but handmade soap is, for some a creative hobby or business, and for others a delightful luxury. We can luckily skip the smelly and unpleasant boiling of wood ash step, and just purchase lye at the hardware store, or online. What happens next looks different but is essentially the same process that the colonial inhabitants of Maine utilized.

Winter is soaping time for me, since gardening is out!

I make soap in a slow cooker, purchased at Goodwill for the purpose. I needed a number of smaller tools as well: a metal spoon and a wooden one; an immersion mixer, to blend the lye mixture without splashing it; and a big measuring cup - glass, not plastic.

Here's my recipe for Cold Process Soap. If you want to try it, you'll also need rubber gloves, protective goggles, and a soap mold lined with freezer paper.

Crisco 272 oz

Canola Oil 272 oz

Lard 181 g

Coconut Oil 181 g

Water 345 g

Lye 126 g

Weigh out the fats & oils and place them in the slow cooker on Low. When they have fully melted, turn slow cooker to Warm.

Weigh out the water and put it in a glass container. Put on your gloves and goggles and weigh out the lye. I go outside for the next bit, to release the fumes there. Always add the lye to the water, not the other way around. Slowly and carefully pour the lye into the water. The mixture will turn cloudy and get hot. Still with a metal spoon until it clears - should be just a couple minutes.

Still wearing your gloves and goggles, slowly pour the lye solution into the melted fats in the slow cooker. Stir briefly with a spoon and then begin using the immersion blender. Blend for a few minutes, and then stop, to keep from burning out the tool. Keep this up until the mixture reaches trace.

Wait, what's that mean? you may be thinking. Trace is a state of the lye/fat mixture in which the material thickens to the point that your stir marks will remain on the surface for a few seconds. If you dribble a bit of the mixture onto its surface, it will take a few seconds to sink back to level. Once the mixture reaches trace, you can be confident that your fats and lye mixture will not separate.

Soap at trace

At trace, I add the fragrance and colorants.This batch is called Stormy Night, for which I used a purple soap colorant, in two different concentrations, for a lighter and a darker shade. I poured the two together, but just barely mixed the batch, because I wanted the two colors swirled together. This batch I layered with some gold mica - sorry, not enough hands to take a photo of the layering process! 

A dusting of mica on top, and then the mold is covered and wrapped in towels to hold the heat in, aiding the saponification process.

The following morning, the soap can be unmolded and sliced, but it will still be a few weeks - at least four - before it is usable. The longer it cures, the harder and longer lasting your soap will be.