Basic Hardtack Recipe

Hardtack has been around in one form or another for a few thousand years. It is a long term staple of bread in a portable package that doesn’t have many nutrients, but it adds a lot of calories to a dish when you need them. The recipe I’m using today dates back to the American Civil War. It was called a number of things by the troops on both sides of the conflict….. tooth breakers, tooth dullers, worm castles (due to the weevils that often hatch during transport), sheet iron crackers, pilot bread, etc.

The bread itself is not readily edible, but it soaks up the flavors of anything that it’s cooked in. It’s just like adding dumplings to your soups or stews, and it’s a great way to bulk up your meals without adding too many extra ingredients. It’s important to bulk up the number of calories in your meals when you’re out in the backwoods, especially in winter. You often need two or three times the amount of calories you normally eat at home during the day if you’re active or the weather is cold.

I start off with unbleached organic bread flour. The recipe is simple…. 2 cups flour and 3/4 cup of water. You can add 1tsp of salt if you want, but I generally don’t. I like to make these and store them back by the dozen.

I make a dry dough with just enough added flour so it’s not sticky.

I roll out a ball of dough the size of a large golfball and press it flat to about 1/2” thick.

I press the cutter directly into the dough until it bottoms out on the cutting board. I pull the excess dough away from the edges and return it to the bowl.

The biscuit cutter has copper pins that poke holes into the hardtack.

The hardtack gets pulled out of the cutter and placed on a cookie sheet in the oven.

The hardtack gets baked at 375*F for 30 minutes. It gets removed from the oven and flipped over to bake for 30 minutes on the other side.

After baking, the hardtack is done. But I’m kind of a redundant sort of person. I place them in a dehydrator at 105*F for another hour to make sure there is no moisture of any kind in the hardtack.

For storage purposes, I usually vacuum seal one or two hardtack biscuits in a plastic wrap to prevent moisture and bugs from getting to it. One 3x3 inch biscuit adds approximately 120 calories to each pot of stew or soup.