Back in the old days, lye soap was used for all of a family's cleaning needs, from bathing and laundry to scrubbing floors and stain removal. Villages held annual soap-making days, in which their citizens would pool their leftover scraps of fat and the lye they had gleaned from slowly pouring rainwater through their wood ashes left from their fires. The resulting lye soap was distributed to the villagers and often was enough to last a year. Does this Spark an idea?
Basic Lye Soap Recipe One
Ingredients:
13 ounces of lye
2 1/2 pints of cold water
6 pounds of lard
Dissolve the lye in the water and allow it to cool (cold water becomes hot when lye is added). Melt the fat in a steel saucepan, then let it cool until it becomes thick. Add the lye/water mixture by drizzling it into the thickening fat, stirring constantly until it reaches the "trace" stage, which means that when fat is drizzled across the surface of the soap it stays raised and doesn't sink in immediately.
Pour the soap into molds or into a cardboard box lined with a plastic trash bag liner and allow it to rest for three hours before dividing it into separate, bar-size pieces. Wait three weeks so that the soap can cure and become mild enough for use.
Basic Lye Soap Recipe Two
Ingredients:
17 ounces of lard
9 ounces of coconut oil
7 ounces of olive oil
2 ounces of canola oil
13 ounces of water
7 ounces of lye
Add lye to the cold water and stir, then set aside. Melt the fats together in a vessel on a stovetop or in a microwave. When the fats have melted, cool them down to 110 degrees Fahrenheit. Add the lye/water mixture and stir continuously until the trace stage is reached.
Pour the soap into molds or into a cardboard box lined with a plastic bin liner and leave it to set for a few hours before cutting it into bath-size bars. Let it grow mild for three weeks before using it.
Tags: cold water, Basic Soap, Basic Soap Recipe, cardboard lined, cardboard lined with