Hardtack is the most famous American Civil War staple food. Hard as a rock, this cracker was easily made by large contract baking companies to the bane of many a Civil War soldier. As Mike Bilbo states, it is more aptly called "digestible leather". It was also affectionately known by the men as "angel cakes, teeth dullers or ammo reserves". But it was also issued, and stored by the men for marching. Carrying a piece of hardtack around in your haversack would serves as a good living history discussion piece for the public. Rumor is, some hardtack made during the Civil War was re-issued and used during the Spanish American war almost 35 years later!

Hardtack Recipe by Kathy Kleiman (MCHA Co. E)

6 parts flour
1 part water

Knead dough until thoroughly mixed. Roll out on a floured surface until about 1/8 inch thick (or there abouts). Cut into squares--there is an actual size piece of hardtack pictured in Hard Tack & Coffee by Billings (p. 114 in my edition), seems to be about 2 3/4 by 3 1/2 inches. His piece of hardtack was small and I've seen larger ones. Probably due to whatever
contractor made the hard tack.

Pierce the hard tack 13 times with the tip of a knife, making sure hole goes all the way through the dough. The Tinsmiths sutler makes a hardtack "cookie" mold that is just great for this. They advertise in the CW News.

Bake at 325 for at least an hour, turning over the hard tack once. Check to see that it is cooked through completely. Take out & let cool overnight to get that real hard & dry feeling. Some people bake at 300 for a couple of hours, just to get it real dry. The finished hard tack will still look pale.

Alternative Hardtack Recipe by Mike Bilbo

Mike got this from an original Indian Wars source, but modified for a contemporary oven:

Wash your hands before starting. Dust how many ever cookie sheets will fit in your oven and place them next to a table where you'll do the work. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

With hands mix flour and water in a large bowl until the gooey mass doesn't
stick to your hands (have a separate bowl of flour handy to add for this
purpose). Do not coat your hands with Crisco to prevent sticking as this
causes problems with the final product. Just deal with it.

Dust flour on a table surface and take the dough and knead it there until
leathery stiff (and your wrists begin to ache). Do the next parts steadily and without letup to prevent rising. Form dough into a rounded shape.

With rolling pin roll it out to 1/2-inch thick. Cut into 3-inch squares and place on the cookie sheets. With 3-tined fork, make hole patterns on one side. (I use a hard tack cutter with nails already in pattern - some tin sutlers
sell these - ask around the membership because maybe someone has one)

Place sheets in oven and bake each side of hard tack for 30 minutes at 350
degrees. Stack finished tack into a box and let set up for one day at which time they will gain the consistency of a brick.

Some people add a little salt to the dough but there is no historical
evidence for this. The salt makes it even harder but also attracts
moisture which will eventually ruin tack stored for a few months (and a lot
of mine is stored for a year).

You are going to get hot, sweaty and tired but that's historically correct.
Historically, soldiers assigned bakery detail at all the posts, like Ft.
Laramie where the oven is still in use, didn't wash hands and allowed sweat
to drip into the dough bins where it was mixed in large masses.

Hardtack History

Civil War Biscuits Still Produced (sent by Mike Bilbo on 8/21/2000 to our unit)

ASSOCIATED PRESS MILTON, Mass. (AP) -- Hardtack crackers, once a staple for hungry Union soldiers in the Civil War, are dry as a bone, hard as a brick - and all of a sudden
selling like hot cakes over the Internet. G.H. Bent Co., a 199-year-old cracker-maker in this Boston suburb, wouldn't sell much of the stuff at all if it weren't for Civil War re-enactors -- who spend their weekends re-creating battle scenes in meticulous detail and go online to
stock up on boxes of the biscuits.

"Since this Internet thing, it's exploded," said Gene Pierotti, 71, the retired former owner of Bent, whose son runs the company now. "It's amazing because it keeps the history alive."

When Pierotti bought the company in 1944, the company had stopped making hardtack. Instead, it made its sister cracker, the Bent's Cold Water Cracker, which has sold on trains and ships since 1801. It also supplied American troops in the war of 1812 and fed the Navy in the 1940s and '50s.

Then, about 40 years ago, an employee at Old Sturbridge Village, a replica of a 19th century village in central Massachusetts, called Pierotti and asked if he knew that Bent was one of the Union army's top suppliers of hardtack rations during the Civil War.

Pierotti didn't know that, but his company started making the flour-and-water biscuits again anyway. It was far from a top-shelf item, selling only about 140 boxes each year through 1999.

Last December, an enthusiastic Civil War re-enactor named Mike Thorson found out about the cracker, and gave it a rave review on the Internet site for his re-enactment unit, the 33rd Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry. Word spread among roughly 50,000 Civil War buffs, and business boomed. Sales are projected at 4,000 boxes this year. Still, hardtack accounts for only about 2 percent of Bent's business.

Bent is not the only company that makes hardtack. Nabisco also sells the biscuits in the Northeast under the name Crown Pilot Crackers, and Mechanical Baking Co., in Pekin, Ill., makes the biscuits as well. And each year, the 33rd Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry uses industrial size ovens to make its own large batch.

The ovens at the G.H. Bent Co. are roaring to fill hardtack orders for re-enactors like Ken Callaway, who tries to replicate every detail of the battlefield -- down to the food in his pockets. When the 30- year-old social studies teacher from Chesterton, Ind., joined the 19th Indiana Volunteer Infantry three years ago, he had no difficulty finding an authentic uniform for
the company. Filling his stomach was a different story.

He tried making the hardtack biscuits that soldiers kept in their pockets for weeks a time. They "didn't turn out so good," he said. A commercial biscuit was too hard, he said. But he found Bent's hardtack authentic enough to get him -- and his audience -- closer to the battlefield history he tries to recreate. "If I try on a small level to replicate the experiences they had, I feel better about talking about it," Callaway said. "It's the only hardtack I use now."

Contents copyright 2000 Las Vegas Sun, Inc.

We actually make hard tack and i love it.

Had some with chili yesterday, and some soup the other day.

Here is some cool sites with hard tack and old west recipes.

The Chuckwagon - Western Recipes


Civil War Food

Hardtack is thick cracker made of flour, water, and sometimes salt. When properly stored, it will last for years. Before the American Civil War, soldiers called it biscuit or hard bread, sailors referred to it as sea biscuit or pilot's bread, but to the Union Army of the Potomac during the American Civil War, it was known as hardtack, a name that stuck and spread to other units, including the Confederacy, but the name hardtack seems to have not been in general use among the armies of the West.

Because it could be prepared cheaply and would last so long, hardtack was the most convenient food for soldiers, explorers, pioneers, or anyone else who needed to be able to pack light and move fast.

read more ...

Army Hardtack Recipe (for all the Damyankees out there)
Ingredients:
- 4 cups flour (preferably 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 at 350°F. 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 consistency of fired brick.

Confederate Johnnie Cake Recipe (for all the good Southern folks)
2 cups of cornmeal
2/3 cup of milk
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon of salt

Mix ingredients into a stiff batter and form eight biscuit-sized "dodgers". Bake on a lightly greased sheet at 350°F for twenty to twenty five minutes or until brown.
Or, spoon the batter into hot cooking oil in a frying pan over a low flame. Remove the corn dodgers and let cool on a paper towel, spread with a little butter or molasses, and you have a real southern treat!


Pirate's Hard Tack Recipe (if you happen to be stuck in Somalia)
2 cups of flour
1/2 to 3/4 cup water
6 pinches of salt
1 tablespoon of shortening (optional)

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

Some recipes also recommend a second baking at 250°F (120°C) to thoroughly dry out the bread.

I grew up on Johnny cakes. Folks don't know what they are missin'.

Side note: I've seen a few analysis by nutritionists that state the reason the Northern armies stayed as healthy as they did was due to the proteins and vitamins supplied by the weevils baked into the hard tack. HmmI need a mister yuck smiley.

Saw this post this morning and went ahead and made the classic flour/water type. I think it's going to be a staple for my hunting & fishing trips. The next one to make is going to be the Johnnie cakes, the only question I have is because of the milk added is the shelf life "eternity" like the hard tack? The only addition I would add is this: I started out with the rolling pin going for the 1/8" thick, and stopped, kicked myself and pulled out the pasta maker. Thickest setting makes it painless, just roll it out to about 1/4" thick with the rolling pin and crank away.

paramudduck wrote:I grew up on Johnny cakes. Folks don't know what they are missin'.

Side note: I've seen a few analysis by nutritionists that state the reason the Northern armies stayed as healthy as they did was due to the proteins and vitamins supplied by the weevils baked into the hard tack. HmmI need a mister yuck smiley.

Lol i love moving targets in my ramen noodles sometimes.

Opened a package on more than one occasion only to cook then get ready to eat and sat the whole bowl was moving

Now you know how the Chinese and Koreans eat every day Johnny.

Anyone of you hardtack lovers know what screamers are? Well Mr.-I-love-hardtack-to-pieces-type-people, the real War Between the States warrior would do several things to their bricks. Some poured hot coffee over the brick in a shallow bowl, killing the weavels and making the brick soft to eat. Ah, screamers. For constipation, take some lard or bacon grease(better) heated to boiling, place the brick in the hot grease. Not only does it kill the bugs but the brick takes up the flavor of the grease. Eat hardily! Wait 30 minutes and wonder of wonders, your bowels start to move! How it got the name screamers? The cramps would double you up and you would run screaming into the bushes to relieve yourself. About an hour later, you would rejoin your outfit. Bon Appitite!

Okay tested recipes for hardtack I had seen on here and then kept modifying until I can up with one I tested and liked the flavor of best and made the hardest bricks.

It was 1 cup of whole wheat flour, 1 teaspoon salt and a ½ cup of water. Hand mixed and kneaded it, until contents were firm, then rolled out to a ¼ in thick, used a fork and punched holes halfway through (do this on both sides) . Then I baked on a ungreased cookie sheet in a 375 degree for 30 minutes, then flip over and bake another 30 minutes.

The hardtack came out very hard and durable. I taste tested this morning by cooking up some salted pork and eggs, then put the hardtack in the pan and fried it until it was soaked through with pork grease. It turned out a bit chewy, but flavorfull.

I will be testing now how long it lasts and is still good to eat. I have put it inot a zip lock bag and put in closet. Will check back once a month and try some and see how it does.