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I heard the stories about 100% olive oil soap, that it was so gentle and mild, yet “slippery” and “low suds.” I made up a batch and have been very pleased with it. Here’s the deal on the “low suds” issue–it’s true to some extent UNLESS you use one of those scrubby plastic bath puffs. With the puff, it is unbelievably sudsy. Also very sudsy as a shampoo bar. I love it. It’s a little bit of a water discount and it sets up very fast and gets hard as a rock in record time. Don’t wait too long to unmold and slice into bars–8 hours or so is all mine needed, but check your batch and make the call depending on your best judgment.
Olive Oil/Castile Soap
100 oz. olive oil
12.6 oz. lye
30 oz. water
Makes about 24 big, chunky, creamy-white, 4-plus oz. bars. Yum.
Follow safe soapmaking procedures.
This site has excellent instructions on how to make soap.
I added no essential oils to this batch, but a general guide for most essential oils is to add .5 oz. eo’s per pound of soaping oils. For this recipe you would need approximately 3.125 oz. of your favorite essential oil(s). Round up and use 4 oz. for extra oomph.
I bring mine to a fairly thick trace so I can make some swirls reminiscent of the hot process ones.
Let your soap cure for about 6 weeks for the hardest, mildest bars.
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For the extra special luxurious french milled castile 100% olive oil. Grate 2 pounds of the soap and place in a gallon ziplock freezer bag, adding 1/2 cup of water. Zip it up and carefully put in a large pot of boiling water, that has some sort of toweling on the sides so it doesn’t touch the sides, and at least 4-6 inches of water. Let it sit in the boiling water for 15 minutes, take out with an oven mitt, and press it, smooshing it and smoothing out the bumps. Add your botanicals, and your oils and your additives, like your ground up oatmean at this point, zip the bag back up and place in the water, for 15 more minutes, smoosh again and then snip the bag at one end, and pour into molds.
This may sound like a silly question, but do you have to have palm oil or any hard fats to make this? I read the soapmaking tutorial and it made it sound like you needed a hard fat as well as the olive oil. Thanks for your help!
Victorian Lavender–No, none necessary. Just the olive oil is fine for this recipe.
The book Making It has some genius directions for making a batch of olive oil soap in a standard-size blender.
Can you give me the complete title of “Making It” please? Maybe the author? I googled and did not find it.
I must say, I am in love with the idea of making my own soap instead of paying the good people at Kiss My Face $2.99 a bar, but I have had the worst luck trying to purchase lye. If you try to buy it online, the shipping charges are very high: I assume due to the fact that lye is a caustic product. On Monday I am going to my local Amish Goods store, hoping they will carry lye because as I understand it they make their own soap. Will let you know if I have success. Aaagh. I really think this soap-making is a process worthy of my time, if only the lye didn’t cost more than a family pack of Dial at Sam’s Club. I’m frustrated.
My soap-making project is dead. I went to Good’s, which is what my sister calls the Amish Wal-Mart. I asked if they had lye, and they said to check Fergusson-Hassler, which is the nearby amish-type grocery. The owner of that store said no, and don’t expect anyone else to have any either. (That was a quote, even though I didn’t put it in”"‘s.) All done. I guess we’ve evolved past soap-making. I would still love to make my own soap if anyone lives in Southeastern PA and has a lead, but I’m not holding out hope.
Hi Kris B in PA. Check Ace Hardware. That’s where I get mine. I’m addicted to making soap. Happy soaping!
Kris B.– I’ve been finding it at Lowe’s lately: http://www.lowes.com/pd_146450-331-HD-CRY-6+CRYSTAL+DRA_0__?productId=3465780&Ntt=roebic+drain+cleaner&pl=1¤tURL=%2Fpl__0__s%3FNtt%3Droebic%2Bdrain%2Bcleaner&facetInfo=
By the way, on my computer anyway, the photo of the canister on the Lowe’s website is a lot shorter and squatter than the actual canister I’ve ever seen, so look for a tall, thin canister. It is listed in some stores as “limited availability” so I would call and check before making a trip. Whether a store carries it may depend on whether or not the customers in that area seem to be buying it for, shall we say, less than squeaky clean purposes.
Hope you can find a reasonably priced local source. Hate for you to have to give up.
Thanks so much Tomato L. and Tanja D. for the suggestions. I just called my local True Value and they do have it. Yay! That store was so little, and well…so close, I figured they weren’t worth a try, but I was wrong. Thanks for the help and I will post after I make my soap and tell you how it turned out.
Dear Tomato Lady,
Here is a brief chronicle of my soap-making adventure. I drove through the pouring rain to True Value and bought two bottles of lye. I watched the About.com video half a dozen times and watched the good doctor make his lye solution. I donned my rubber gloves and poured the lye in and stirred exactly the same genteel way Dr. Meek and Mild stirred his lye and my lye sank straight to the bottom of my bowl and adhered itself. I finished the soap anyway, and hovered over it like a worried mother hen for forty eight hours. Still soft, a bit like lip balm or lip butter. I got frustrated and threw it in the dumpster.
I stomped back to the grocery store and bought vegetable oil this time. I thought this was turning into an expensive obsession, so I bought cheaper fat. I cursed Betty the cashier and Justin the bag boy for making me pay for the oil and for putting it in my bag. Second batch of lye and water. Stirred more vigorously this time, more like the cook I really am and less like the scaredy-cat novice scientist. Lye and water successfully combined, I made the vegetable oil soap and waited and worried some more. THIS batch never really got to soft-set stage. It stayed butter-yellow and quite liquidy. More cursing, another trip out to the dumpster. Kicked dumpster. Cursed the dumpster and garbage men as well for good measure. Stomped back to the hardware store in the rain for more lye and grocery store for more oil…olive again. Curse you Betty and Justin.
Made olive oil soap again. Thirty six hours later, the soap was still at lip balm stage, and I left it for dead on my dining room table. I’ll throw it in the cursed dumpster tomorrow, I thought, and stomped upstairs to bed.
When I came downstairs this morning, you won’t believe what was sitting on my dining room table: rhymes with rope. Yes, the soap fairy snuck in while we were all asleep and turned my lip balm into soap!!! Real soap! The soap that is creamy-white like your picture, the kind of soap I’d wished for since I read your recipe!!!
I MADE SOAP!!! Uh, uh, uh….(Insert dance moves here). I made soap.
Do I have a theory? You betcha. I think all the rain we’ve been having around here lately has made the air so humid, it took a while for the water to evaporate out of the soap. That may be the only tip I can give a novice soap-maker like me.
The soap had set so hard overnight, I couldn’t even slice it into nice bars! It was like cutting white chocolate. It splintered a bit and I’m telling myself that the rustic oddly-shaped bars are unique and lovely, and if I wanted perfection I should just buy Dial. Besides…I made soap. Next batch will be more uniform bars. Yes, after all that, I do think there will be a next time. I don’t ever want to smell Dial’s idea of a mountain waterfall again.
Thanks for the support, I’ll check in again soon.
Kris B.
you rock, kris b.! way to go, soapgirl! i am so trying this. teacher gifts, here i come.
Thank you Kath. Can’t wait to hear how yours turns out!
I’ve now developed a soap making obsession too and after reading how to make olive oil soap I decided to give it a go. I had no idea what the trace stage in soapmaking should look like so after beating the life out of the mixture with a wooden spoon and getting no where I resorted to the electric cake mixer. When it looked like thin pudding I was fed up by that stage and poured it into moulds. I watched over it like a mother hen, cursed my impatience several times over when there was no change to the setting consistency. I spent a day on the computer looking up videos on soap making trying to work out what I had done wrong only to realise that the house temps were cool for those two days and day 3 I had set soap! It doesn’t look soft and creamy white like yours but they are hard white bars smelling of georgeous lavendar. My next batch of soapmaking used extra ingredients and by now I’d wised up to the fact a stick blender was the way to go and the soap nearly set in the pot in minutes. Every batch will be a trial until you try it! Roll on 6 weeks so I can try it! Happy soapmaking everyone.
Karen Hann–Glad you stuck it out! Thanks for the encouraging words for first time soapers!
Well, this is months later but it’s by Erik Knutzen and Kelly Coyne. The whole title is a mouthful. Making It: Radical Home Ec for a Post-Consumer World (though if you just put ‘Making It’ into Amazon, it *should* come up. Sorry for the delay!
So I am getting very excited about making soap! I have read 100 articles, posts, and stuff. But I have a question that has yet to be answered- what do I need to get started? And although it hasn’t been mentioned, but it may be a obvious thing- once its used in soap, it isn’t safe for cooking? So my stick blender is never to be used for food again? And can anyone give me a general startup costs? Can you use Teflon coated pots? I intend to use this recipe, for my first go around, I like the simplicity of it! So is the lye my only costs? Or do I need certain things? I saw gloves and I assume those are a necessity. Thanks!
Elizabeth–Check your inbox! I sent you a long, rambling email!
I have been making soap forevr and I will tell you that olive oil soap is a tricky mistress. STICKBLENDER!!!! Olive oil soap can somtimes take DAYS to trace by hand. And it can take a long time 20-40 mins with a stick blender. Sometimes I even walk away from it, take a break and come back to it just so I won’t burn out the motor of my blender, but here are a few tips- Make sure the lye mix is good and hot and the olive oil is room temp or cooler. This can shock the oil into tracing. Add an essentil oil that you know will act as a catalyst such as cinnamon, or an ounce of bees wax will often do it. HTH Heidi
PS No teflon, aluminum or wood
I am not terribly inclined to start making my own soap. The lovely oloive oil soap I found at Tuesday Morning satisfies my need for luxury. But reading all the comments and postings here is very entertaining. Thank you all you couragous and dedicated soap makers!
I wonder if the lye being caustic is not bad for your skin? I have never read much about making soap but would like to if the lye isn’t dangerous or bad for you. Does all storebought soap have lye in it? Could you use something else instead of lye?
Maggie–Good question. We get this question a lot, as do other soapers. One of our favorite sites actually has a scrolling banner across all its pages that reads “No Lye, No Soap, Can Not Make Soap Without Lye!” It is true that lye is caustic until it has reacted with the oils and water, but once it has, called saponification, it goes through its reaction and is no longer caustic. Storebought soap is also made with lye.
You can get lye at http://www.lehmans.com.
I just found a 1lb pail of lye, sold as drain cleaner, on-line at http://www.truevalue.com/product/Plumbing/Drain-Openers-Augers-Plungers/Drain-Cleaners-Openers/1-lb-100-Lye-Household-Drain-Opener/pc/15/c/2207/sc/1208/14320.uts for $4.29. Pretty good deal if you have a store nearby to ship it to. That will save you the shipping costs. I am always looking for a better deal though. Has anyone found a better one? I am very excited to make my first batch of soap!!!!!
I am fairly new to the cold process. I made melt-n-pour for years and finally got up the courage to battle the lye after watching hours and hours of videos. I found my Sodium Hydroxide at Ace Hardware (pipe cleaner), but had to buy my Potassium Hydroxide on Ebay. My first recipe of cold process soap is with olive oil, coconut oil, and palm kernal oil. I love it. It has never dried my skin out like store bought soaps. I even shave it down, melt, & dilute it with water when I want to make some shampoo. I have not used the potash yet for liquid soap. I want to get comfortable with the bars first. I made my second batch today and it is setting up in my storm building right now. Some are an awesome creme brulee’, peppermint, and peppermint & tea tree oil. My daughter has some skin issues and I have read that olive oil soap with tea tree and mint is very good for her skin. So far it has worked great. I hand-stirred the 1st batch for 3 hours and 20 minutes and this time I used a stick blender for about 10-15 minutes! It is definitely the way to go. I gave my family bars for Christmas from my 1st batch, this time I think I will label and set some out for sale at my sister-in-laws beauty shop. I think the hardest thing for me is having to wait the 6 weeks for curing before using. God bless
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