What Is Lye?
Lye is a caustic that today is most often used as a drain opener (and is one of the key ingredients in Drano.)
Although it sounds like a horrible addition, it's a necessary ingredient for making handcrafted soap. It's used to saponify the oils, or chemically change them from oil into lovely soap.
There is no lye left in properly made cold-process soap bars.
Homemade soap is gentler and better for your skin than most store-bought detergent bars.
Can You Make Soap Without Lye?
New soapers commonly ask, "Can you make soap without lye?" The precise but contradictory answer is both yes and no.
YES, you can make soap without ever handling lye yourself.
NO, chemically speaking, soap itself cannot be made without lye.
Soap is made by blending oils (like olive oil or coconut oil), a liquid (water, goat's milk, etc.), and an alkali (lye).
Lye is needed to convert oils into soap. Without it, you can stand there stirring until the cows mosey home and never have anything in your pot other than oil and water.
When making soap completely from scratch, using oils and water, lye must be used. Soap made in this way is done by either the cold process method or the hot process method.
But there is a third soap-making method called the melt and pour method.
When making melt and pour soap you DO NOT need to use or handle lye. The lye step has already been done for you!
Can you make soap without lye?
can you make soap without lye? Well… yes and no. While lye is required to make soap, you can buy melt-and-pour soap bases that have already combined the oil, liquid, and lye for you so you don't have to work with lye directly. This method is super easy and requires just a few minutes of your time. So, let's get started… here's how to make soap without lye.
How To Make Soap Without Lye?
Some soap bases come scored, and others require you to cut them. In either case, you'll need about eight 1″ squares of soap base. Start by placing your cubes into a microwave-safe glass measuring cup.
Place it into the microwave and heat, it on high, for approximately 30 seconds. Stir with a wooden craft stick, and continue to microwave, on high, in 10-second increments; stirring in between. This stuff melts pretty quickly, so don't overdo it. (For reference, mine took a total of 40 seconds: the initial 30 seconds + another 10 seconds.)
Once your soap base has melted, mix in your "add-ins" (in my case, ground lavender buds and oats*) and stir it in with a craft stick.
*For reference, I placed 1/2 Tablespoon lavender buds and 1/2 Tablespoon oats into a coffee grinder and ground them down to the desired size.
Once your "add-ins" are mixed in, add 20-30 drops of essential oil, giving it one last stir. The soap begins to harden right away, so you need to move quickly.
With everything thoroughly mixed, pour the mixture into your soap mold.
Allow the soap to cool and harden at room temperature. Once hardened (which takes about 30-60 minutes depending on how big your soaps are), you can pop the soap out of the molds and it's ready to use.
