Hardtack is a long-lasting shelf stable biscuit/cracker that got it’s name during the American Civil War, and the term stuck to fill in as a term for any hard bread ration. However, the lineage of this dried bread ration actually dates back many thousands of years. It was known by many other names, had a slight variance of ingredients, shapes, sizes, and uses. But it has been the core ration for militaries and has reliably served those seeking a reliable, cheap, lightweight, and nutrient dense ration that could help them survive a time of scarcity.
ITS HISTORIC USE
In ancient history, the Egyptian sailors uses a flat bread that was just put together in a similar fashion, though the millet was quite crumbly. Roman soldiers on the march were issued grain as their ration, and had to process the grain themselves into porages and even types of breads, leavened and unleavened. Prior to a campaign, they were ordered to make bread for the march, I.E. their version of hardtack called Buccellatum, which came from the word Buccella, “small mouthful”. This was finely ground, and made into a stiff dough and then slowly baked overnight.
In the medieval times, this dried bread ration was again a normal ration that army bakers were ordered to make for an army on the march. “Ships Biscuit” was actually the term that was used to describe this dried bread ration up until the Civil War, mostly because the only people who used it on a consistent basis was sailors. These biscuits were round and slightly varied in size depending on the vendor that made it. Biscuit actually gets it’s name from the medieval latin word “biscoctus”, and it means (BIS) ‘twice’ (COCTUS) ‘cooked’.
In fact, the concept of this dried bread survived in the militaries all over the world up until around WW1. By then, the “Biscuits & Bully Beef” rations served on the WW1 front was not much separated from the ration that was supposed to be issued 50 years prior. The concept of bread rations still survives to this day in modern survival rations, though the plain flour and water makeup has turned into crumbly, flavored, vitamin infused, soy bulked ration bars. Even modern MRE crackers and bread can keep for long periods of time, like their predecessors.
WHAT IS IT MADE OF?
Hardtack is basically just a two ingredient ration of flour and water. Salt is added at times for flavor, but it is not required. The idea was to make a bread that could last a long time and was compact and ready to eat. What is most bread but flour and water with yeast as leavening and other ingredients for flavor? The best way to preserve bread is to strip it of all the stuff that will make it go bad, to include moisture. This leaves you with a very hard and dense bread.
The well known “hardtack” crackers were well articulated in John Billings book ‘Hardtack & Coffee’ as being about 3” square and about 1/2” thick, roughly the size of your palm. The regulations called for these crackers to be perforated with 12 to 16 holes that were relatively evenly spaced. The square shape was deliberate to help with boxing them in square crates, and they were perforated with the holes to encourage steam to leave with ease and prevent steam pockets that would cause uneven cooking and buildup of air.
As the Civil War progressed, the various contractors and companies were given relatively loose guidelines, and you see a few varieties of hardtack that survived the period. Some pieces are a bit larger than 3” and look to almost be the size of a hand rather than a palm. The basic concept behind the dimensions was to make sure it was not too thick or it would take too long to be completely cooked/dried, and not so thin that it was brittle and didn’t hold shape in transport. You didn’t want it to take forever to cook, and you don’t want it to be crumbs by the time the troops finish their march.
HOW IT WAS USED
This dried bread ration was often said to be so hard that you could drive a stake into the ground. This is a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much. The bread was notoriously hard to break, which was the point. Soldiers were issued roughly a pound of this hard bread each day, and the number of crackers depended on the size of the crackers. In later wars, soldiers were issued more bread and other ration components, but the hard bread was still their mainstay that made up the bulk of the ration.
Soldiers often had to get creative with their bread ration and make it into a type of porage, dip it in a liquid to soften it, add it to stew like a thickener, or crumble it and add it to bacon fat for a fatty carb-loaded meal.
However, there are plenty of accounts of sailors and soldiers that actually preferred to eat their bread ration dry as something to eat on the march. Soldiers would break the crackers into smaller pieces and nibble on the move. Some soldiers actually felt, after years of living on hard bread, that it was actually superior to traditional soft bread. This isn’t backed by any real truth, but it is a well documented opinion from people who lived off this type of bread for years in the military.
QUALITIES OF A DRIED BREAD RATION
If you were looking for something that was lightweight, inexpensive, calorically dense, will keep for years, and really simple to manufacture in bulk, you cannot get much better than a dried bread ration. Even today, it would cost you less than $10 to get a large bag of all-purpose flour and turn it into a food you can store away in the darkest recesses of your pantry or go-bag for years. I still have bread I made 5 years ago in Alaska that I am still eating while watching shows or writing articles.
I am not going to pretend that this hard bread doesn’t lack certain qualities like protein, and a wide profile of vitamins. But this ration is not, and never was, advertised to be a solo all-in-one ration that will take care of all your nutritional needs. It was designed as a ration that could provide the bulk of your calories, not all. Yes, during the Civil War, the only ration that soldiers saw on a relatively reliable basis was Hardtack. That was due to logistical inefficiencies, not because that was the ration itself.
If you wanted to use Hardtack as your own survival ration, I would highly encourage it, but I would pair it with other things like multivitamins, jerky, canned fruits/preserves, and even fresh forage. However, in a pinch, something as simple of hardtack can get you though a rough time.
HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN
There are a ton of ways to make dried bread. You can add spices like oregano to give it flavor, or even add ingredients for flavor if long term storage is not a quality you seek. However, I am going to talk you through, and show you how I make hardtack for myself. I personally make the hardtack like it was made back in the Civil War, square and the size of the palm of your hand, roughly. Hardtack for me is not just used as a survival ration that can be there in case of the boogaloo, but also as a snack that I enjoy consuming recreationally.
GATHER YOUR SUPPLIES
The supplies you need will vary slightly from person to person, based on materials available. For myself, I gather up:
Flour (Whole wheat or all-purpose)
The more processed, the longer it will store.
The less processed, including having the germ of the wheat will add more nutrition
Measuring cups
2 cup
4 cup (If you have it)
Warm water
Mixer
Highly recommend a Kitchen aid and a corkscrew style dough kneader attachment.
Baking sheets
Rolling pin
Ruler or measuring implement
Bread dough cutting implement
Skewer stick
MIXING
After you have all your ingredients and tools ready to go, it is time to start mixing. My recommendation is to mix:
4 cups flour
1 1/3 cups warm water
1 tsp salt (optional)
First thing to do is put your flour into your mixing bowl and set your mixer to a relatively low speed. My Kitchen Aid has 10 speed settings and I will set it at a ‘2’. I will caution you to not do more than 4 cups of flour at a time because you are making a very stiff dough that can damage the motor if you do more than that. You can always mix up more dough to make more.
Slowly add water while the mixer does all the heavy lifting and mixing. Let the wet flour get incorporated evenly before adding more. If you decide to add salt, I recommend stirring the salt into the water so it gets evenly mixed into the dough. After all the water has been added into the flour, let it knead for a bit until the dough sticks together. If you wish to add a dry herb like dried oregano, I recommend you wait until all the water is incorporated into the dough. You will know it is ready to go into forming when the dough no longer sticks to the kneading attachment.
FORMING & CUTTING
When forming the dough, it is important to have a layer of flour on your roll-out location to prevent sticking. Roll out the dough to be about as thin as the width of your pinky. Fold the dough in half and roll out to a pinky width before folding again. Do not fold it twice right off the bat or it will fail to make the bread into a layered cracker, and will more or less make the dough more like a dense biscuit. If you want to have something like Ships Biscuit, you can just hand form the biscuits by hand to roughly 3 inches in diameter.
When I roll out the dough for the final time, I will use a ruler to measure out the rough measurements of 3” X 3” and make sure the dough is roughly pinky thickness. When you are cutting out the dough, place the excess dough back in the mixer to be incorporated into the next batch of dough. When you lay the cracker forms on your baking sheet, my advice is to quickly dab the corners to round them out and prevent them from having sharp edges. This can be problematic if you store them in baggies, trust me.
Last step is perforating the dough slices to allow the steam to escape and encourage even cooking. If you are not worried about the cosmetics, use a fork or an irregular pattern of perforation. But if you are trying to stay true to the time-honored method of making mass-manufactured and consistent hardtack, I recommend sticking to a certain pattern. If the crackers/biscuits are pretty uniform, they can get a relatively even set of perforations such as 4 across and 4 down. If some of your pieces are more rectangular, I use 5 perforations along the long side and 4 on the shorter side.
COOKING
The name biscuit means that it is twice baked. The mechanism of preservation for this bread is to cook it low and slow in order to prevent violent steam production. I have tried cooking it high and then letting it cool naturally, and it always resulted in bursting crackers during the cooldown process. For the first baking, I recommend 2 hours at 250 degrees Fahrenheit. If you have lots of crackers shoved in the oven, this time may have to shift to 2.5 hours at the same temperature.
After this first bake, take the crackers out just long enough to flip them and immediately reinsert them into the oven for another 2-3 hours. The reason to flip is because the steam being produced inside can make the corners and outside of the crackers tip up like flaps. For ships biscuit, you do not necessarily have to flip, if you just prefer to cook it for longer to make sure it is dried out sufficiently. After the flip for the second cycle of cooking, you can just set your oven timer and then let the hardtack cool naturally overnight.
STORAGE
After your hardtack is ready to be stored, I like the simplest storage mechanism of using paper towels and gallon ziploc bags. If you wish to divide it into 1lb weights, label it, go ahead. I am not into that they of detail. Even with this simple method of storage, I have 6 year old hardtack that I still eat. It is hard and crunchy and still edible.