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You use LYE in your Goat Milk Soap?!
By Arielle | June 19, 2009
We say our goat milk soap is all-natural. We say it contains no chemicals, fragrances, or dyes. We say that each bar of our goat milk soap is very mild and gentle. Sounds great, doesn’t it?! Then you take a look at the soap ingredients listed on the website and on the label of each bar of Garland Goat Soap. One of the listed ingredients is sodium hydroxide (lye). “Wait a minute!” you exclaim. “Isn’t sodium hydroxide a chemical? What’s more, isn’t it a harsh, caustic chemical?” The answer to this question is both YES and NO. You see, sodium hydroxide is a chemical. It is harsh and caustic. However, sodium hydroxide undergoes a chemical change in the process of soapmaking called sapanification, so that in reality, the resulting bars of soap have no sodium hydroxide present in them.
In cold process soapmaking, the method I use to make our goat milk soap bars, an acid and a base must be combined to produce soap. It is the reaction that occurs between the acid and base which forms soap. The acid is the oil, whether a neutral oil or a pure fatty acid. The base must be the sodium hydroxide, for fats and oils cannot be converted into soap without it. As the sodium hydroxide and the oils are combined together, the process of saponification occurs as the triglycerides of the oils break down into fatty acids that react with the sodium ions of the base lye solution to create a whole new product – SOAP!
The proportion of sodium hydroxide to oils in a soap recipe affects how they react…and we use a discounted proportion of sodium hydroxide in order to produce a “superfatted” bar of soap – an extra mild, moisturizing soap. I will share more on what this means in the next blog post. For now, though, you can understand how our soap is made with sodium hydroxide yet contains no chemicals and is very mild and gentle!
Topics: Characteristics of Soap, Goat Milk Soap, Oils, Sodium Hydroxide | No Comments »
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