- How to make historic hardtack.

The new Survival Tomes blog has a great recipe for hardtack.

Hardtack was a common Civil War ration.

It was basically a large cracker, that was variously left to go stale, mildewy, infested with weevils, tainted by gunpowder, turpentine and oil and generally abused before it was finally handed over to the soldier as a main component of his rations.

It was not a popular food by any means and usually needed to be soaked before it could be eaten. 





Union Hardtack Recipe (source)

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

Directions: 
 “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. Remove and enjoy!”

Hardtack reappeared as a ration in WW1 and WW2, so it has a long history of feeding soldiers.

What was good about hardtack was that it could take huge amounts of abuse and still be a useable food.  It was very very durable.

I think the Survival Tomes blog has great promise.  It plans to focus on explaining the basic things a survivalist has to know how to do - like chop a tree down.   So it could be worth keeping an eye on.

Thank you for the link Mr. Tome.

[And thank you to the US National Park Service for the hardtack image.]