Hard tack recipes

[Lonewolfe20]

Does anyone make hardtack
I am looking for a proven recipe
My son has been researching the civil war and wants to make some so I thought I would check here for a someone's family brew

Thanks

[Two Steps]

Well I'm sure that there are more...but here's one that's worked for me...
You'll need about;
Two pounds of unbleached flour (not self rising), or one pound of flour and one pound of wheat flour.  1/2 teaspoon or so of salt and water as needed.
Mix up the salt and flour in a bowl...add water slowly while mixing.  The dough should be about like putty  
Al

[Lonewolfe20]

Thanks
I'll let you know how it comes out
I'm sure we will cook this weekend
It's suppose to be windy so that will probably shut down our trip to range
And will be a good time to be inside  

[Two Steps]

[Lonewolfe20]

Well the hardtack came out great the kids and I made it this morning and I read them some history about it while it cooked
We went and shot for an hour or so and came in for some fresh hardtack and beef broth
I think we will wrap a couple pieces up and slip it into our possibles bag in case our sites are off next we go hunting

Thanks for the recipe

[Two Steps]

Glad it worked for ya, and glad the kids got in on it  
Al

[Uncle Russ]

Lonewolf, glad those turned out good for ya!  :?
I am serious about my question though. I just have no clue how feasible it is.

I dearly love cold biscuits and a sausage patty, or bacon,  I can fill a haversack up with those things and go for hours on end. (listening to my veins go pop and crackle all the time while I'm walking.)
In fact, I always have a bag of those things when I'm hunting out in Yakima, or the Glockum.

Uncle Russ...

[Two Steps]

Well I reckon ya could add stuff if ya wanted to Russ...I've never tried it.  You're still gonna wind up with a rock hard piece of baked flour  :?
Al

[Loyalist Dave]

A More Correct Ship's Biscuit [Hard Tack] Recipe   [size=85](imho)[/size]

I got to thinkin' one day, if ship's biscuit [aka Hardtack] is so hard, then how come I read about sailors eating it without having to crush it with a hammer and soak it in water or coffee? Especially with the bad teeth of their day??  

So I did some research, and found that modern, whole wheat flour is from hard, red wheat.  It was introduced into the United States around 1870.   :lol:

So, because I can't do that with my present resources, I instead bought some whole wheat pastry flour, and added some wheat bran for the chaff,  when I made the biscuits.

RECIPE:

2 cup Whole Wheat Pastry Flour
1 - 2 cups wheat bran*
Water

Combine the ingredients in a bowl, starting with a single cup of wheat bran.  
*(If after the first batch you still find they are super hard, add more bran next time)
Add water and mix until you have a stiff dough.

Roll out with a rolling pin until the dough is about 1/4" thick, then cut with a biscuit cutter

Poke holes in the biscuits with a fork (helps them to dry)

  If you wish to get fancy, you can mark the biscuits with the tip of a table knife thus  /|  giving them "The King's Arrow".  So that IF you are playing a British person they are from The King, and if not, they were captured from a British vessel or fort.   ) You end up with a hard cracker, but actually possible for folks with good teeth to chew, and it will work when crushed up and added to Skillygallee to soak up the bacon fat.  

IF you're doing a later era, then simply roll it 1/4" and trim it into a square, and place it on the baking sheet.  Score it into large squares but don't cut completely through the dough, and then using a fork, poke the holes.  When done baking, remove from the oven to cool, then break up the big square into your pieces of Hardtack.  

Q: Why no salt?
Salt actually attracts moisture from the air and then helps mold to grow.  

Q:  Is it possible to add a little something to the hardtack?
This is a survival ration, meant to be edible perhaps after a year aboard a ship or at a fort.  So YES you can add stuff to the biscuits, but they then become cookies, and they will spoil.  

I hope you like this And I hope your teeth are better for it.

OH and you CAN use just modern whole wheat flour and water...it gives you good, environmentally friendly, non-toxic, rifle targets...you can add food dye for contrast, red, yellow, or red+yellow for orange.     Unlike clay pigeons, which are often made of stuff that is toxic to animals, especially hogs, you can leave these behind when done shooting and the birds and other animals won't be harmed.  

LD

[10thumbs]

  We have used a modified Ezekiel bread recipe. The original calls for wheat, beans, lentils, millet, spelt and barley. Kept old Ezekiel going for over a year. His ration was around a half lb. a day. As for the millet, foxtail is the wild variety. As to spelt, I have no clue. But we added sorghum syrup and baked it twice. It really gets hard. If I didn't have eight crowns, I don't think I could've chewed it. But it lasts for years!

[Doc Nock]

10 T's

I see Ezekiel bread in the frozen food section and a diabetic buddy claims it's made from Sprouted Wheat, making it a Veggie, not a carb...

I tried making some Bannock here with regular flour and it spiked my blood sugar and triglycerides last physical...or at least I am saying that is the culprit... 

This is very revealing thread to me ... All these years I though hardtack was a meat product...not a bread stuff.. :0

I read a book entitled "Wheat Belly" that claims our grandparent grew and ate an Einhorn variety of wheat that today is so cross bred (no pun intended)That the older wheat and an even older from the bible days didn't make nice fluffy stuff but it all now spikes one's blood sugar so I try to avoid carbs

[10thumbs]

 Yeah, about 50 yrs ago, they started messing with wheat. Yields went from 60 to 100 bushels per acre. Loaves per pound went up too. They crossed it w/barley and spelt to get a short stiff stalk. Used to, it was so tall a kid could get lost in a wheat field. The modern stuff doesn't blow down nearly as bad in a rain storm, so it combines better. Too bad there are over 100 complications concerning gluten. The two types of gluten in the old variety had a balance, but no more. Some folks can quit their insulin when they get off gluten. Others can avoid arthritis. Some people are lucky. All they get is fat. The guy who developed it got a Nobel prize. But there went the amber waves of grain. Now we know why the Good Book says, "Don't sow your field with mixed seed".
  Eincorn is still occasionally available   -for a "price".

[Doc Nock]

Yeah, about 50 yrs ago, they started messing with wheat. Yields went from 60 to 100 bushels per acre. Loaves per pound went up too. They crossed it w/barley and spelt to get a short stiff stalk. Used to, it was so tall a kid could get lost in a wheat field. The modern stuff doesn't blow down nearly as bad in a rain storm, so it combines better. Too bad there are over 100 complications concerning gluten. The two types of gluten in the old variety had a balance, but no more. Some folks can quit their insulin when they get off gluten. Others can avoid arthritis. Some people are lucky. All they get is fat. The guy who developed it got a Nobel prize. But there went the amber waves of grain. Now we know why the Good Book says, "Don't sow your field with mixed seed".
  Eincorn is still occasionally available   -for a "price".

In that book I referenced the Dr who wrote it suggested there is a lab in Ole MX that can get 3-4 crossbreeding yields per year vs planted stuff up here where its usually one....

He further claims they have continually cross-bred with other grasses to get a shorter, stronger stalk, be 2-4 D resistant and pest resistant and tolerant of super dry weather... but that each plant parent cross carries ALL the DNA of BOTH parent unlike animals where each parent donates only 1/2 their Chromosomes, and the REAL problem with all this cross-breeding is each cross breed (according to the author of "Wheat Belly") creates a new protein which has NEVER been tested on humans, cause it's just wheat...so we're ginny pigs and now they have wheat flour for every type of food stuff that hasn't been around when our grandparents were alive...

I got rid of all my pasta, switched to natural long grain brown rice and watched my weight drop...then move in fall of 2014 to NE tn and lost fresh produce markets year round (prolly what I got was same stuff as grocery stores at farmer's markets in PA, but cheaper and in better shape), so it's been way harder here to maintain that and, and...I see mostly fairly obese people here, but alas, and alack, I stil ended up with prostate cancer so who's to say... I was just trying to avoid Type II diabetes which plauged everone of my Dad's side of the family...

[Butler Ford 40]

I made a batch of standard flour, water and salt and it turned out as expected, no complaints but it is just hard flour and salt.  Thought I'd try to "spice" it up a bit, 1 cup of flour, 1 cup of yellow cornmeal, salt and a teaspoon of cayenne pepper.  I wouldn't want to soak it in my coffee but if I smack it on the desk, it's a non greasy Frito!   

[Loyalist Dave]

Yes that likely tastes better than actual ship's biscuit.

IF you want to make a modern survival biscuit in these trying times, use the above recipe but use Masa flour instead of the cornmeal.  Masa is made from highly ground hominy, and as such the niacin in the corn has been changed and is now consumable by the human body.  That would prevent pellagra , which is a niacin deficiency one gets when eating too much cornmeal and not enough other stuff.  You might also try a potassium salt substitute, to help prevent cramps in hot weather, and package using a vacuum sealer for food.  Should be shelf stable for quite a while.

LD