When one talks of lye soap, one talks of grandmother’s soaps. Though lye is used as an ingredient in many soaps, today it would be considered a bit old fashioned to make purely lye-based soaps. However, lye can be made into soaps for the same reasons our colonial ancestors used it. With modern science, we [...]
Lye is used in the baking of pretzels, in order to create the glaze on top of the pretzel. You allow the pretzels to sit in a lye bath, and the lye will cake the glaze right on it. Here’s an example recipe: For this recipe you’ll need: 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon yeast 1 [...]
Sodium Hydroxide is used variously in all sorts of domestic cleaning and laundry products. The most common use of lye is in the soap making industry. Soap makers simply cannot do without a lye soap, so much so that there are some who say, all soap is lye soap. As an alkali, lye reacts strongly [...]
If you think that the use of lye is circumscribed only to soap making and domestic cleaning, you maybe wrong. Lye or caustic soda has an array of industrial applications too. An essential ingredient in multifarious industrial processes, lye is normally produced by the chlor-alkali process which involves use of brine solution. When manufactured through [...]
Imagine your favorite white T-shirt turning yellow or cream or a shade of gray. Whites are not white if they fail to have a gleam in them. The initial newly-bought gleam fades away and all our white clothes turn yellow in course of time. To restore the whiteness of our clothes, we use bleaches. Bleaches [...]
What do you do when your wood furniture starts showing signs of age? Aged wood has a lot of marks, stains and blotches on its surface. It is often ugly to look at and may not sync in with new wood if you want to make some new piece of furniture with old wood. This [...]
Lye is not all about cheerful things. Of course, it helps in soap making, chemical processes, manufacturing of industrial products and a whole array of applications and uses. Though all these bring cheers to one, it is not a benevolent element like water. It is as harmful as a chemical like sulphuric acid. Often one [...]
If you are a die-hard fan of pretzels, you know how it feels to have that yummy little delicacy run down your tongue and food pipe. Pretzels are well-known in American kitchens, but not all pretzels made in the United States are true German ones. Originally a local German delicacy, the German pretzel entered into [...]
Yes, you may not be able to do without lye, because it is present all around you – in your soaps, your cleaning products, your leather-making process, in fabric making, metal polishers and almost every other household product that cleans. Even the pretzels, rolls and noodles you take have lye in them. So, what is [...]
Handling chemicals is not an easy job and handling lye or sodium hydroxide is no better. If you are in the habit of making soaps at home, you would probably know how to handle lye solution, and maybe this is the right time for you to experiment making lye at home. Generally caustic soda that [...]
