How to Make Hardtack
More Articles Related to FoodKnowing how to make hardtack will not only impress your friends but is an excellent way to store flour in your survival food cache for long periods of time.
You may have heard of hardtack when reading or watching TV documentaries about long sea voyages, military campaigns, explorers, prospectors, and pioneers. When these proven, experienced survivors rely upon a particular piece of gear or survival food you know you would do well to emulate them.
Hardtack is legendary for its resilience to rough handling and extreme conditions. It can be stored for years without ill effect as long as it is kept dry and is easy and inexpensive to make. Durable, nutritious, and light in weight, hardtack sounds like a nearly perfect survival food!
Names for Hardtack include:
- Hardtack
- Pilot Bread
- Ship’s Biscuit
- Sea Biscuit
- Sea Bread
- Dog Biscuit
- Tooth Dullers
- Sheet Iron
- Molar Breakers
Make Your Own Hardtack Recipe
There are a number of good hardtack recipes that you can try at home that will be the subject of another Survival Topic. To begin with, perhaps the most basic and historically accurate is this army hardtack recipe:
- Hardtack ingredients:
- 4 cups flour, preferably whole wheat
- 4 teaspoons salt
- Water - about 2 cups
Preheat your oven to 375 degrees F. Mix your flour and salt in a bowl, adding just enough water to form dough that does not stick to your hands or the bowl as you kneed it. Then roll the dough out into a rough rectangle about half an inch thick. Cut into three inch squares.
Now using a nail or other object press a patter of four rows of four holes each in each square. Do not go through the entire thickness of the dough. Then turn the hardtack dough over and do the same on the other side.
Next put the squares on an ungreased pan and bake in the oven for half an hour. Then turn the hardtack squares over and bake for another half hour so that the hardtack is just a bit brown on both sides.
When you take the hardtack out of the oven it will be somewhat brittle, but as it cools it will become very hard – hopefully as “hard as a brick”!
How to Eat Hardtack
Now that you know how to make hardtack you will need to learn how to eat it! Because it tends to be much too hard to chew when dry (hence the nicknames related to broken jaw parts), hardtack is typically pre-soaked in coffee, crumbled into soups and stews, or fried with bacon and eggs or whatever else was on the menu.
I highly recommend you give making your own hardtack a try. It is fun, easy to do, and makes an excellent survival food that you can take anywhere.
mcdonough
Very useful and will really help me when i go hiking and camping.
place
I had to make hardtack for school, thank you for this survival article!
I needed to know how to make hardtack for school too and I'm sure that after reading this I will get a high grade. Thank you for the help!
portland
I have a recipe for hard tack that uses a bit of sugar in it and some oil, it has a better flaver then the traditional kind, but keeps almost as well.
WA, USA
I remember in eighth grade we were learning about the civil war and our teacher showed us how to make hardtack. It is really fun to make and I have actually made it about 4 times now, just for fun. The hartack tastes good too.
Texas
Can this be baked in a dutch oven over a dakota fire?
SurvivalTopics - yes, in fact I have made hardtack in this way.
alaska
could you make smaller squares of this for trail mix?
Survival Topics: Yes of course.
Washington
Can you crumble Hardtack into a powder to use in Bannock or other type of bread?
Survival Topics: Well, you could do that by grinding the hardtack into fine particles.
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tennessee
Thanks for your information on how to make hardtack.