Does soap contain lye?
I hear this question so often that I want to get it out of the way first. The short answer is: No. Properly made soap does not contain lye. The long answer is that lye is used in the soap making process. Years ago soapmakers had to guess how much lye to use for the oils they had and often the soap would come out lye heavy which was harsh on the skin and rapidly gained a bad reputation. Today’s soapmakers have a wealth of information at their fingertips and have wonderful calculators to judge exactly how much lye to use so that the soap chemical process uses all the free lye leaving no harsh lye in the finished product.
