HARDTACK
The recipe couldn't be simpler. Mix flour or meal with water and cook until very dry and hard. When eaten, dip in water, tea, coffee, or milk, as available. The thinner you make them, the quicker they cook and assures dry interior. Poke holes in the top with a fork to allow better interior cooking.
Hardtack, or seabiscuit, is a way of consolidating flour into a biscuit. Traditionally, place on griddle over simmering fire, flipping over occasionally for smoky crispness. If salt or sugar is available, this improves the taste, as would the addition of spices and herbs. However, the typical purpose of hardtack is a preservation of an energy dense food so herbs can decrease self life. The denser the biscuit, the better the preservation; as shown in the accompanying picture, an actual hardtack made during the civil war surviving still now at the Wentworth Museum, Pensacola, Florida.
Hardtack, or seabiscuit, is a way of consolidating flour into a biscuit. Traditionally, place on griddle over simmering fire, flipping over occasionally for smoky crispness. If salt or sugar is available, this improves the taste, as would the addition of spices and herbs. However, the typical purpose of hardtack is a preservation of an energy dense food so herbs can decrease self life. The denser the biscuit, the better the preservation; as shown in the accompanying picture, an actual hardtack made during the civil war surviving still now at the Wentworth Museum, Pensacola, Florida.
Besides use as rations in bygone war times, hardtack could be used today as a survival energy source including on long treks in the wilderness.
Recipe
Makes seven 3x3 squares of hardtack
Ingredients
1 cup flour (any pounded grain)
1/4 cup water
1/4 tablespoon salt (optional, further helps preservation)
1/2 tablespoon sugar (optional, further helps preservation)
1/4 tablespoon dried herb (optional, can decrease preservation)
Makes seven 3x3 squares of hardtack
Ingredients
1 cup flour (any pounded grain)
1/4 cup water
1/4 tablespoon salt (optional, further helps preservation)
1/2 tablespoon sugar (optional, further helps preservation)
1/4 tablespoon dried herb (optional, can decrease preservation)
Instructions
If salt, or sugar, or dried herb is used, combine with flour in a mixing bowl. Add water and mix with hands until the dough comes together. The idea behind hardtack is that you add water to flour so that you can create a dough just pliable enough to shape, and then bake as much of the moisture out as possible. Poke holes in the biscuits to help them bake evenly and prevent them from rising like a bread (this is called "docking"). A long bake is best to assure uniform dehydration without disproportionately cooking the outside leaving the inside with internal moisture. If using an oven, heat to 250 deg F and heat the biscuits for about two hours on one side and another two hours on the flip side. |
"What was hardtack? It was a plain flour-and-water biscuit. Two which I have in my possession as mementos measure three and one-eighth by two and seven-eighths inches, and are nearly half an inch thick. Although these biscuits were furnished to organizations by weight, they were dealt out to the men by number, nine constituting a ration in some regiments, and ten in others; but there were usually enough for those who wanted more, as some men would not draw them. While hardtack was nutritious, yet a hungry man could eat his ten in a short time and still be hungry. When they were poor and fit objects for the soldiers’ wrath, it was due to one of three conditions: first, they may have been so hard that they could not be bitten; it then required a very strong blow of the fist to break them; the second condition was when they were moldy or wet, as sometimes happened, and should not have been given to the soldiers: the third condition was when from storage they had become infested with maggots." ~ Hardtack and Coffee, Bilings, John D. (1887) reprinted by Lakeside Press/ R. R. donnelley (1962).