Canola Oil
Saponification values, fatty acid makeup, and what this oil does in a bar of soap.
Use Canola Oil in a recipe → Added at 0%, you set the amount
Saponification values
Grams of lye needed to saponify one gram of canola oil. Multiply by your oil weight, then apply your superfat.
- NaOH (bar soap)
- 0.133
- KOH (liquid soap)
- 0.186
- Iodine
- 110
- INS
- 56
INCI: Brassica Napus (Rapeseed) Seed OilSaponified name (for labels): Sodium Canolate
Where to buy canola oil on Amazon → Affiliate link. It costs you nothing extra and helps keep Lye.rs free.
Fatty acid profile
| Fatty acid | Percentage |
|---|---|
| Oleic | 61% |
| Linoleic | 21% |
| Linolenic | 9% |
| Palmitic | 4% |
| Stearic | 2% |
Soap qualities at 100%
What a bar made entirely of canola oil would score. Almost nobody soaps a single oil at 100% - this is here so you can see what the oil contributes to a blend. The shaded band is the range most makers aim for in a finished recipe.
What that means in a recipe
Almost no cleansing contribution (0) against high conditioning (91). Gentle on skin, but a bar built mainly on this will be slow to trace, slow to harden, and low on bubbles without something to balance it.
Very little hardness (6). Expect a soft bar and a longer cure unless it is combined with a harder fat or butter.
A high iodine value (110) points the same way: more unsaturated, softer, and quicker to go off than a saturated fat.
Derived from the numbers above rather than written by hand, so it stays in step with the data. Tendencies, not guarantees - your oils, water, and technique all move the result.
Oils that behave similarly
Closest matches by fatty acid makeup - the usual starting point when you have run out of canola oil and need a substitute. Check the lye maths again after swapping: SAP values differ even between oils that behave alike.
- Peach Kernel OilSAP 0.136 NaOH
- Apricot Kernel OilSAP 0.139 NaOH
- Pistachio OilSAP 0.133 NaOH
- Peanut OilSAP 0.137 NaOH
- Karanja OilSAP 0.13 NaOH
Recipes using canola oil
- Everyday Silk 25%Half olive, rounded out with canola and soybean. No coconut at all, so cleansing sits at zero and the bar is exceptionally mild. Soft out of the mould - unmould late.
- The Starter Four 20%A forgiving first batch. Nothing exotic, nothing that seizes, and the numbers land comfortably in range across the board. A good recipe to learn trace on.
Open the calculator to load any of these from the recipe library.
Use Canola Oil in a recipe → Added at 0% - you set the amount