Hardtack / Sea Biscuits

[TorNicho]

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cookbook:Hard_Tack

Hard tack is a cracker/biscuit flat-bread used during long sea voyages and military campaigns before the introduction of canning as a primary food-source. Mostly inedible for dry and hard preservation, it was usually dunked in water, brine, coffee, or other liquids, or cooked into a skillet meal. This cracker was little more than flour and water which had been baked hard and would keep for months as long as it was kept dry. Also known as a sea biscuit, sea bread, or ship's biscuits.
[edit]Ingredients

2 cups of flour
¾ cup water
¾ teaspoon of salt (optional)
Optional/not traditional adjustment: This will make the crackers more palatable but mean that unlike traditional hard bread they will eventually spoil, even if properly stored.
1 tablespoon of shortening
[edit]Procedure

Mix all the ingredients into a dough and press onto a cookie sheet to a thickness of ½ inch.
Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (205°C) for half an hour. Don't cut now
Remove from oven, cut dough into 3-inch squares, and punch four rows of holes, four holes per row into the dough (a fork works nicely).
Flip the crackers and return to the oven for another half hour.
[edit]Notes, tips, and variations


Wikipedia has related information at Hardtack
Some recipes also recommend a second baking at 250°F (120°C) to thoroughly dry out the bread.
Scale ingredient quantities equally if more dough is required.

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http://www.ehow.com/how_2082699_make-ha ... ments.html

Instructions
1
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

2
Combine water, adding as much as 2 cups, with 4 cups of flour and 4 teaspoons of salt. Gradually adding the water will keep the mixture from becoming too sticky. Knead thoroughly. It should feel elastic-like when complete. If too sticky, add more flour.

3
Flour a surface for rolling out the mixture. Roll out into a rectangular shape until roughly 1/2 inch in thickness.

4
Cut the hardtack dough into squares. A pizza cutter works well for this. Hardtack came in various sizes, depending on the company that manufactured it, but it typically was small enough to fit into one's pockets.

5
Take a fork and make holes in the dough, creating a look similar to today's saltines. Flip each hardtack over and make holes on the other side as well.

6
Put the dough on a cookie sheet. Do not grease the cookie sheet. Bake the hardtack for 30 minutes, flip and cook for another half an hour.

7
Take the hardtack to a war reenactment for the participants to sample. If not fresh, the hardtack should be difficult to break. Oftentimes hardtack was crumbled into coffee so it could be eaten.

[Toddie]

It's food for thought (excuse the pun) i'd be interested on it's caloric value.

But if i ever find myself in a situation with two cups of flour, water and salt, i wont be going hungry!

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. Might give it a go later. If i do, I'll post results.

[preppingsu]

http://thesurvivalmom.com/2013/02/26/vi ... ency-kits/

Same idea....

[elvengate]

The thing is that you cannot really store flour long term.

We are starting to store the whole grain in mylar bags.

We have a load of flour that we are making hard tack from and then vacuum sealing the hard tack.

This is a great way to store flour.

[Brambles]

LOL, I remember my great uncle reminiscing, in a bad way about ships biscuits. According to him, they weren't a biscuit and should never be on ships! The medic did a roaring trade in tooth extractions apparently.

[nickdutch]

I am just wondering if it will work with gram, rice, buckwheat and doves farm gluten free flours. might be worth a try