Helped my Daughter make it for  extra credit for her Social Studies Class.

I'm going to wait till morning to try it with my coffee like the guys in the civil war ate it.

I don't think they had it WITH their coffee, I think they had it IN their coffee.
Good luck.

Me and my buddy were discussing making some also.  I'd be very interested in how your experiment turns out, please post.

I think that I asked before, but does anyone have a standard easy to remember recipe for this stuff?  What about fluffed up/ improved recipes for this stuff that you might have evolved over the years?

Thanks

Just a few from a quick search.

Recipe 1:

4 cups flour (preferably whole wheat)
4 teaspoons salt
Water (about 2 cups)
Pre-heat oven to 375° F
Makes about 10 pieces

Mix the flour and salt together in a bowl. Add just enough water (less than two cups) so that the mixture will stick together, producing a dough that won’t stick to hands, rolling pin or pan.  Mix the dough by hand. Roll the dough out, shaping it roughly into a rectangle. Cut into the dough into squares about 3 x 3 inches and ½ inch thick.  After cutting the squares, press a pattern of four rows of four holes into each square, using a nail or other such object. Do not punch through the dough.  The appearance you want is similar to that of a modern saltine cracker.  Turn each square over and do the same thing to the other side. Place the squares on an ungreased cookie sheet in the oven and bake for 30 minutes. Turn each piece over and bake for another 30 minutes. The crackers should be slightly brown on both sides. The fresh crackers are easily broken but as they dry, they harden and assume the consistency of fired brick.

Recipe 2:

2 1/2 cups old-fashioned or quick oats.
3 cups unbleached flour.
1 1/2 teaspoons salt.
1 teaspoon baking soda.
In a separate container, mix:

1 1/2 cups buttermilk.
3 tablespoons honey.
1/2 cup melted bacon drippings or shortening.

Combine the two sets of ingredients. When the dough is thoroughly mixed, roll it out on a floured board to a thickness of about a quarter inch.  Cut out circles of dough with a large drinking glass dipped in flour and put them on a lightly greased cookie sheet.  Bake for about 5 1/2 minutes at 450° F.  Let the hardtack cool on a wire rack before serving with jam or jelly.

Union Hardtack Recipe:

2 cups of flour
1/2 to 3/4 cup water
1 tablespoon of Crisco or vegetable fat
6 pinches of salt

Mix the ingredients together into a stiff batter, knead several times, and spread the dough out flat to a thickness of 1/2 inch on a non-greased cookie sheet. Bake for one-half an hour at 400 degrees. Remove from oven, cut dough into 3-inch squares, and punch four rows of holes, four holes per row into the dough. Turn dough over, return to the oven and bake another one-half hour. Turn oven off and leave the door closed. Leave the hardtack in the oven until cool.

Confederate Johnnie Cake Recipe

2 cups of cornmeal
2/3 cup of milk
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon of salt

Mix ingredients into a stiff batter and form eight biscuit-sized "dodgers". Bake on a lightly greased sheet at 350 degrees for twenty to twenty five minutes or until brown. Or, spoon the batter into hot cooking oil in a frying pan over a low flame. Remove the corn dodgers and let cool on a paper towel, spread with a little butter or molasses.

interesting...  I remember making some way back in high school... I also remember it was to hard to eat

Add weevils to taste for authenticity.

You put the hardtack into the coffee to soften it up and to make the weevils float to the top.

so you can have your protein separately.....

Just remember to choose the lesser weevil.

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This reminds me...

I eat oatmeal raw from a Gatoraide bottle, just dump in a mouthful and mix it with some RO water and kinda munch on it.

Well early this year my SO was going to replenish my Gatoraide bottle and there were those weevels or whatever crawling around in it.

She got new oats.

It's about 9 months later, time for bugs again, and I asked her to fill up my bottle and to not tell me if there are bugs crawling around in it.

Try not to look either, just dump some in a wash it down. YUM!

lol

"and then you throw away the hard tack and eat the weevils..."

Originally it was just flour and water, I think it may have had some salt but I remember reading contractors would scimp on that even.

I like Bent's crackers- they are similar but better. They are round like ships biscuits/pilot crackers used to be.  
http://www.bentscookiefactory.com/store.html#hardtack

That reminds me.  I have a box of hard tack from 2006 I have been meaning to eat and do an ARR on.

If memory serves me I got this recipe out of the old American Survival Guide Magazine

Hard Tack

6 servings:

2 cups white flour
1/2 cup wheat germ
1 tb sugar
2 cups masha harina
1/2 cup quick cooking oats
1 tb salt
1 3/4 cups water
   Optional:
sesamie seeds
seasoned salt
caraway seeds
onion flakes

Mix all dry ingredients thoroughly.  Add water.  Mix with hands until well-moistned but not sticky. Divide into 4 parts , roll out each quarter until 1/4 inch thick, place on cookie sheet (each part should cover half a cookie sheet). Bake at 350 for 30 minutes.  Score with a knife before baking, if desired.  Break into pieces as needed.  Keeps indefinitely in air-tight, moisture-proof containers.

Of course, adding fat or oil to it will make it taste better, but it doesn't keep as long.  With no oil/fat it will last practically forever.

Mmmmmm.....weevil soup.....

Stick the oatmeal in the freezer for a few days, that should kill the weevils/eggs so they don't reproduce.

HT spund pretty bad.  Howabout those biscuits the britished corqured the world on?  Those have to be better?

I started a thread in here a couple years ago about hard tack. Cant find it now. My search fu is feeble and weak! Anyhow, I was extolling the virtues of HT. Its good to know how to make food that travels well, especially if the Wild Winds Blow, we'll need to utilize all those wheat berries we've been squirreling-away.

I was actually pondering a recipe for a Survival HT Biscuit™. Knocking it around in my head, I was thinking how an HT biscuit could be fortified with whey powder. How about this...

Quantities ommitted for reasons of discussion, but you get the idea:

Milled whole-wheat flour
salt
sugar
whey powder
cinnamon

I think this would make a hearty biscuit that would balance the carb with a little protein. You could exchange the salt for Lite Salt, and then you'd have some electrolyte replacement as well. There is probably a ton of different things that can be added to bolster the food value, but its important to remember that the more ingredients you add, the less shelf life your bread will have. Surely though, the above biscuit recipe, sealed up with a foodsaver would last a long time.

Which I always found odd, since the other classic survival food - pemmican - is mostly fat and will also last forever.

That seems like a cool idea.  I might substitute whey powder with one of the bean flours or pea-protein mix options (digestive issues).

 

Can you get parasites form weevils?  If not I've really got no problem with 'em...

I thought you were suppose to tap it to shake them out.

Not true at all. Animal fats go rancid - not quickly - but they do. Look at it this way. Leave a stick of butter on your counter. The time it will take for the butter to go bad is the same time it will take for your pemmican to go bad.

THAT is not true, do a bit of research on pemmican.  Try spouting that crap at one of our Moutain Man Rendevous.  I've eaten pemmican that was a couple of years old.  

Whey protein is a BAD idea, it denatures quickly and gets nasty.

If you go to Canada look for the Biscuits Purity sells, they are similar.  They have a lightly sweetened one that is really good too.

http://www.purity.nf.ca/hardandsweet.html  I love them

US Wellness Meats

The Pemmican Manual

Okay, I will concede that it will last a while, but there must be special steps in order to protect it from moisture. The pemmican in the first link actually looks pretty good.

I think the "special steps" are "cool, dry place".  The same as with hardtack.

Of course, that gets back to my original question - *why* doesn't it go bad?

I remember eating these in Alaska on a back-country canoe/backpack trip in 2006.... they weren't too bad with cheese or peanut butter...

I made it one year for my students when we were reading a story set on a 19th century sailing ship.  Just big saltines, really.  If you want to do it like they did back in the day, let it sit out for a couple of months.  I have seen Civil War hardtack in museums.  Still looks just like the shit I baked.

Apparently the ANZAC guys had their own version:

http://www.awm.gov.au/encyclopedia/anzac/biscuit/recipe/

For the same reason sausage doesn't go bad.  It's treated, then sealed in an air-tight air-free container. When it is consumed, it's opened and used relatively soon once opened.

 

Maybe it has something to do with animal fat vs vegtable fat.




I am thinking about making both and taking them on my next outing.
Seems like a good mixture of carbs and protiens.