Oven Method Instructions

Part 1: Cooking the Soap

Put your soap mixture in a large oven-safe container with a tight fitting lid.    A glass roasting pan or a large stainless steel stockpot works well.    You can use an enamel roasting pan if the lid fits tightly enough. You must have a container with a tight fitting lid.    Make sure your container is large so that the soap won?t overflow the container while it is in the oven.

If you do have an overflow in your oven, don?t worry.    Soap doesn?t generally burst into flames but it does smoke and smell bad.    Turn off the oven, open the windows, clean up the mess and continue.    This soap doesn?t care if you interrupt the process. (You can even cook it partially one day, remove it from the oven, and continue cooking the next day.)

Your ultimate goal is to have your ?cooked? soap look like Vaseline and have a slightly thicker consistency than Vaseline does.    So, in other words, your opaque, white to cream colored soap will become thick and translucent (not transparent) and often clumpy.

1. Heat your oven to 300 degrees F.    Make sure the pot lid is snugly in place. Check the progress of your soap every half hour.

2. Put the soap pot into the oven.

3. After 10 minutes: Stick blend.    The soap will generally go from thin honey consistency to thick and lumpy.

4. Stir again about 20 minutes later: You may find that your soap has become rock hard and you won?t be able to stir it with the stick blender. That?s ok.    Move the lumps and clumps around with a spoon.

5. At the next 30 minute check, the soap will seem somewhat softer than before.    It may seem slightly sponge-y.    It won?t be soft enough to do anything except move the clumps & lumps around with a spoon. Make sure to scrape the sides and bottom of the pan. You may begin to see signs of translucency at the edges of the clumps.

6. At the next 30 minute check, the soap continues to soften but is still lumpy.    Use a spoon to move the lumps around, again scraping the sides and bottom.    There should be more signs of translucency around the edges of the clumps. Your total cook time at this point is 1-1/2 hours.

7. Keep checking and ?stirring? every 30 minutes.

8. After about 2 hours of total cook time, you should see definite signs of translucency.    If you don?t, the lid on your pot is probably not tight enough or your oven temperature is not hot enough.    Adjust accordingly.    Try setting the oven to 325 (no higher than 350) degrees F.

9. At 2-2.5 hours of total cook time, the soap should become softer and about 3/4 translucent.    The lumps should be mostly translucent with opaque white centers. If it doesn?t look like this, refer to step 6 and make adjustments.

10. When your soap is nearly or completely translucent and soft enough to ?stir? (but not stick blend), test a bit with phenolphthalein.    Take a bit of soap on the end of a spoon and put one drop of phenolphthalein on it.

11. If the phenolphthalein remains colorless, remove the soap from the oven.    If the phenolphthalein turns pink, leave the soap in the oven and continue cooking.    Test the soap periodically with the phenolphthalein until it remains colorless then remove the soap from the oven.

12. Your total cook time should be around 3-4 hours but I?ve had it take as long as 6 hours.    I?ve also had successful batches of soap that never turned completely translucent and that didn?t pass the phenolphthalein test. Do not use soap that turns the phenolphthalein bright pink. That indicates it is very lye heavy and unusable. Failor?s booklet gives some hints on what to do if you encounter this problem.

13. When your soap is finished cooking, remove it from the oven, leave the lid on it and let it sit for at least 24 hours. Don?t insulate it or place it in a room that is too hot.