Hardtack recipe's

[yogi]

I've been looking for hardtack recipe's
The most common one is
4 cups flour ( preferably whole wheat )
4 teaspoons salt
Water about 2 cups
Cook for half hour each side
Has any one got a diffrant one and is it a good pack food to carry.

[robtattoo]

Hi there.
Don't know if this would be of any use to you, but I found the site whilst searching for parched corn receipes.....


http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/rohdenburg81a.html

[yogi]

HI robattoo thanks for the link and welcome to the site .

[Mike Ameling]

The classic British soldier Biscuit (hardtack) was pretty similar. This recipe makes ONE biscuit. Scale it up or down as needed.

2 cups flour
1/2 tablespoon salt
1/2 cup water
Mix all ingredients well. Add a little extra water if needed (a teaspoon at a time) until you have a very stiff (not sticky) dough. Work the dough into a ball, then set it aside for a fre minutes to let it set up. Next, roll the dough ball out until it is about 3/8 of an inch thick, cut it and punch 12 to 16 holes into each round to help let the moisture escape. Place a few clean bricks in your oven and preheat it to 350-400 degrees, then place your biscuits on the bricks for one-half hour or until all the moisture is out of them and they are slightly browned (you can use a cookie sheet instead of bricks, though the later will give you a better biscuit). Finally, set your biscuits aside to cool and dry out for a day or two. Biscuits must be dry and hard in order to keep well. Two of these make up a pound of "bread".

This is the recipe from Mark Tully's booklet The Packet, and is based upon the early to mid 1700's military records. Two of these biscuits were the bread portion of the daily military issue ration for a soldier/sailor. The daily ration was one pound of bread, one pound of beef or pork, just over an ounce of rice, seven ounces of peas, and just under one ounce of butter. But the rations were generally issued once a week.

Adding anything like sugar or butter or anything else will greatly reduce the "shelf life". Those other things tend to lead to mold growth. Ship's biscuit or hardtack was meant for long term storage - as long as you kept it dry. Hmmm ... one ship like the HMS Victory carrying 500 plus men, each getting 2 ship's biscuits a day, and being out of port for several months. That's a lot of biscuits to have made up and stored below deck! 1000 a day is 500 pounds per day, times how many days?

One friend makes up his Ship's Biscuits for living history camps following this recipe. But he also adds in a small handful of uncooked brown rice to the dough. Then, when he is "in camp" in front of the public, he can ... pick out "weevils" from his issued biscuits! (but they also don't hurt him to just eat them) Yeah, he does have a bit of a twisted mind. But the looks he gets from the spectators is wonderful!

Mikey - that grumpy ol' German blacksmith out in the Hinterlands

[Exploriment]

I have to ask: Why bother?

I know it's historically accurate and it's what soldiers and sailors and explorers would have used, but.....ughhh.

I guess I value my teeth too much and see hard tack as a serious threat to their well being.

I've tried hard tack and I'll pass.

Just my opinion.

[Mike Ameling]

Hardtack was not generally eaten as-is, or by itself. It was generally crumbled up and mixed into your soup/stew/mush. This softened it up. A common meal involved crumbling a piece of ship's biscuit onto your plate, and then pouring/ladling on some boiled beef - with a bunch of the stock/juice. This then all soaked down into your "bread" - softening it up, allowed that "juice" to flavor your bread, and saving all that juice for you to eat. And "boiled beef" was the common method to prepare meat back then - as frying or roasting meat was considered "unhealthy". Yeah, funny notions abound in the military over all the centuries.

The key idea was to have a form of Bread that would last a long time in storage and being transported. If you kept hardtack dry, it did that. The modern version is in the MRE's as something like the Wheat Snack Bread. But that is a lot softer and (in theory) more edible. Or the packs of Crackers.

So, if you want to pack along some "bread" that will survive (not start to develope mold) for more than a couple days, hardtack is an option. Or you can pack along flour and the other ingredients to make your own bannock on the trail.

It's just an option.

Mikey - that grumpy ol' German blacksmith out in the Hinterlands

[tombear]

Just knocked up a biscuit cutter

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_dVcnpchhsqI/TFco__6T9zI/AAAAAAAAB6g/K94rJnHZxyM/s512/Hardtackcutter1.jpg

3" x 3" x 1/2".

Anybody got and varriations on the recipes in this thread as with the crap weather I'm going to do some baking with the kids tomorrow and I'd like to do some they would actually enjoy, as oppose to break their teeth on.

ATB

Tom