The Center of Camp > Camping Gear and Campfire Cooking
Hard tack recipes
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. 8) ) 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. :laffing
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!
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version