soap making - getting started

by the peak soap team

Making your own soap can be a great hobby especially if you are already conversant with the kitchen. There are a lot of great kits around like the sets from Hobbycraft. Hobbycraft in the UK sell melt and pour soap kits that can be heated up and poured into any type of mould. They sell a range of glycerine based soap that is fun for kids and non-toxic. There are now a myriad of fun moulds available online and in the hobby and food shops that can make soap making a constructive past time. 

If you want to make more traditional soap you will need a few more things. A question we get asked a lot is do I really need to work with lye (sodium hydroxide) or other chemicals such as potassium hydroxide to make soap?  Well, the short answer is yes. The definition of 'real' soap is a product made strictly from animal/vegetable oils and an alkali salt. This is why as you may already know supermarket soap is generally not real soap. It's a synthetic called a syndet or synthetic detergent.

Read More