Army Hardtack Recipe

Ingredients:

• 4 cups flour (perferably 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 consistentency of fired brick.

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AKA: PVT. Butterball

More on Hardtack...

Hard tack is a cracker/biscuit flatbread 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 some other liquid 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. It was also known as a sea biscuit, sea bread, or ship's biscuits.

Ingredients

• 2 cups of flour
• ½ to ¾ cup water
• 6 pinches of salt
• 1 tablespoon of shortening (optional/not traditional)

Procedure

1. Mix all the ingredients into a dough and press onto a cookie sheet to a thickness of ½ inch.
2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (205°C) for one hour.
3. 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).
4. Flip the crackers and return to the oven for another half hour.

Notes, tips, and variations

• 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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