Many people with sensitive skin love Dove Soap, but this would be a fun project if you like to make your own soap. Dove is an excellent soap, and one of the main reasons is that it is made of derivates from tallow or palm oil. But did you know that Dove sensitive skin soap is, in fact, the original Dove bar without fragrance? It is the same recipe scented with a flavor enhancer. Many people with eczema or other skin diseases cannot use Dove Soaps. If this is you, you should try this natural ingredient recipe instead. In fact, the ingredients used in Dove soap are not mild at all, but we get to that later.

Dove is not a lye type of soap, but it does contain some saponified tallow or palm oil. It is a non-soap detergent bar and the main ingredient is Sodium Lauroyl Isethionate. Sodium lauroyl isethionate is a surfactant and detergent used as a cleansing agent and to impart lather in the soap.

We will stripe the ingredients list down to purely natural ingredients and make a perfected “Dove Sensitive” type of soap. One of the excellent things about soap made with lye is that it doesn’t need any preservatives, so we can leave those out.

If we went 100% with the fats and oils from the Dove ingredients list, we would get a very hard and much too cleansing bar of soap that would not be mild enough for sensitive skin. We, therefore, substituted Coconut Oil with Coconut Milk to make a creamier bar (you can use any milk you like). We also added Olive Oil and Shea Butter to make a milder soap and left out Stearic Acid, which makes a harder bar that cures faster. There is no need for it, but you can add 0,5% (of total oil weight) and recalculate the recipe if you like it.

Dove soap is colored with Titanium Dioxide. There is absolutely no need for color, or other additives, in soaps for sensitive skin, so we leave this one out too. If you like to read about the health risks of Titanium Dioxide, go to Wikipedia.

For full ingredients list, go to www.dove.com

Oils used in this recipe

Here are links on where to buy the oils used in this recipe.
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• Palm Kernel Oil Organic
• Tallow Beef (or you can make your own)
• Shea Butter
• Olive Oil

Recipe percentages, lye, and superfat

This information is for advanced soapers. Go to recipe if you are new to soap making.

• 30% Tallow Beef
• 30% Palm Kernel Oil
• 20% Olive Oil
• 20% Shea Butter
• 26.830% Lye Concentration
• 38% Water percent of oil weight (water is substituted with Coconut Milk to the same amount of NaOH)
• 6% Superfat
• 22 oz Total oil weight (624 grams)
• 0% Fragrance

Soap Quality

Soap Quality	Range	This Recipe
Hardness	29 – 54	52
Cleansing	12 – 22	22
Conditioning	44 – 69	45
Bubbly	14 – 46	22
Creamy	16 – 48	30
Iodine	41 – 70	48
INS	136 – 165	156

Recipe for Dove Sensitive inspired soap

Soap Fatty Acid Profile

Lauric	15
Myristic	7
Palmitic	15
Stearic	16
Ricinoleic	0
Oleic	39
Linoleic	5
Linolenic	1