Castile Soap in 5 Minutes
The other day I was searching for something completely unrelated and came across this amusing video about making Bacon Soap.
The video brought me down memory lane—some years ago we borrowed a book on soapmaking and endeavoured to make soap for Christmas presents. That experiment went wholly wrong and our house smelled like lard for weeks and we had no soap to show for it in the end.
But this video made it look simple and easy, and so on a whim I decided to make soap. I checked for all the ingredients. I had lye, some lard (from my pie crust experiments), some canola and olive oil, and of course water. So I did some research on the web and went to work. A couple hours later, I had soap in the pot waiting to trace (”trace” is a stage the soap gets to, where it’s ready to pour into the mold). It waited… and waited… and finally several hours later (after occasional stirring, I’m not stupid enough to stir constantly for several hours) it did trace and I poured it in. Actually I’m not sure it didn’t trace earlier and I was just looking for something else.
The next day it was set up pretty well in the mold, well on its way to becoming soap. That wasn’t so hard. But I knew it could be easier. So I reformulated, used my imagination (and borrowed some imagination from the web) and tried again yesterday afternoon.
This time I decided to make Castile soap. That is, Olive Oil soap. I didn’t want to make much since it’s just an experiment. I didn’t want to stir a lot. I didn’t want lots of dirty dishes. I didn’t want to mess around with molds. I wanted the whole process to take about 5 minutes. It does. Here are my instructions for making Castile Soap in 5 minutes (and a few weeks of waiting):
Update: now find this recipe at http://hans.fugal.net/soap/castile.txt.
Enjoy your all-natural castile soap. It’s not hard to make, but you may still wonder if it’s worth all the trouble. Allow me to quote:
Hand made soap retains extra glycerin, known to soften the skin naturally. Glycerin is one of the best known humecants (attracts moisture to the skin). It is often extracted during the process of manufacturing commercially made soap, then sold as a valuable by-product. Natural ingredients are rarely used in commercially manufactured soap. If used at all, it is sparingly. One of the best advantages of making your own soap is that you are in charge of quality control. You decide which ingredients to use and how much.
If your skin is sensitive to scents, additives, etc., or you need to impress your wife/girlfriend/soon-to-be-girlfriend, then the benefits are even more pronounced.
The soap you end up with will be the same quailty of soap that sells for $5 a bar at health nut^Wfood stores. It will cost you about $1 and 5 minutes of time to make yourself. If you enjoy making soap, you may want to learn more about the chemistry and how to make different kinds of soaps each with their own qualities and benefits, and how to scent and color them into works of art. The internet is full of great instructions, and you can’t go wrong once you understand the basics, which are well-put by Caveman Chemistry (though to be honest I skipped all that chemistry junk and got to the practical instructions).