Recipes for soft hardtack

[erik]

Re: Recipes for soft hardtack

Hardtack is one of the staples of our history. It is hard and dry to preserve it. Maritime nations have used it for centuries.
I have hard tack souvenirs from HMS Victory that are sold to visitors. Don't try that stuff. The only consolation is that it is whole wheat.
In Canada hard bread is still made and used to make maritime dishes along with salt beef.
I have tried Bent's hard bread and find it edible but it does self destruct.
After reading the posts I went to my havresack and pulled out a 2 month old cracker made from the CRRC recipe, snapped it in half and devoured the cracker with no problem and I do not have the best dental condition.
Soak it, fry it in fat, crumble it and add it to a stew or boil some dried apples and spread crumbled crackers on top, throw some rum in for an excellent sauce.
If the crackers become infested boil them . If they are worms eat them in the dark as they are purported to taste like jelly.
I read a thread on this site which suggested that when visitors are being offered hard bread you could mix in some cream of tarter which makes them more chewable. I have tried this and it works. I will stick to the traditional recipe myself.
I can see a soldier gnawing his way through the 10 average issue crackers. He would have little time for mischief.

Erik Simundson

[Bill]

Re: Recipes for soft hardtack

I have been using Bent's crackers for years. It is true they are slightly more breakable when new, than the usual homemade variety. If you want a harder cracker, just take the Bent's crackers out of their plastic bag and store them in a dry place for a few weeks.

The information on the packaging addresses this issue: "Bent hardtack is packaged fresh in resealable plastic so as to cause you less pain when enacting the supper. Because of the freshness of the cracker it can be eaten as is or prepared in any number of ways according to your taste and ingenuity."

Does anybody think the usual hardtack ration, during the Civil War, were crackers less then a month old?

[DougCooper]

Re: Recipes for soft hardtack

Like most things we learn to love, we often make fun of it. Such it is with that staple of army nutrition. Sung to the tune of Foster's "Hard Times Come Again No More" and generally attributed to the 1st Iowa Infantry (first version):

Let us close our game of poker, take our tin cups in our hand
As we all stand by the cook’s tent door
As dried mummies of hard crackers are handed to each man.
O, hard tack, come again no more!

CHORUS:
‘Tis the song, the sigh of the hungry:
“Hard tack, hard tack, come again no more.”
Many days you have lingered upon our stomachs sore.
O, hard tack, come again no more!

‘Tis a hungry, thirsty soldier who wears his life away
In torn clothes—his better days are o’er.
And he’s sighing now for whiskey in a voice as dry as hay,
“O, hard tack, come again no more!”

- CHORUS

‘Tis the wail that is heard in camp both night and day,
‘Tis the murmur that’s mingled with each snore.
‘Tis the sighing of the soul for spring chickens far away,
“O, hard tack, come again no more!”

— CHORUS

But to all these cries and murmurs, there comes a sudden hush
As frail forms are fainting by the door,
For they feed us now on horse feed that the cooks call mush!
O, hard tack, come again once more!

FINAL CHORUS:
‘Tis the dying wail of the starving:
“O, hard tack, hard tack, come again once more!”
You were old and very wormy, but we pass your failings o’er.
O, hard tack, come again once more!

[53rd PVI Co.C#]

Re: Recipes for soft hardtack

Doug,

Go on line and contact G.H. Bent Company at www.hardtackcracker.com and order a box, or two of their hardtack crackers. You will receive a product you can actually eat. Unlike the crackers I've been issued at any number of events! :cry_smile

Thank You For the info .....Doug Raab

[teufelhund]

Re: Recipes for soft hardtack

Please explain how 19th century stowage methods for "Hardtack" kept the crackers soft and, mold/insect free. Historic documentation tells a much different story. Otherwise, you statement is invalid.

Mea culpa, I said nothing about hardtack being soft let alone being free of infestations. I used "hard" to refer to it becoming harder than when it was made under certain storage conditions, and from what I gathered from reading a few period accounts in the past years about it being so hard when issued that it was unusable and just discarded by the soldier it was issued to. From my personal use, I believe that the lower the humidity that the hardtack is stored in, the "harder" it will become to the point of being unusable. Perhaps that wasn't as clear as I wanted it to be in my post.

The second part of my comment is a response to what I presumed Doug was asking about which was a recipe for his hardtack, which is the point of the thread. Of the few times I made it, a few crackers sat around for quite a while and became very hard to the point I could not bite into it. But made correctly and used within a reasonable timeframe, I have found it personally to be "tasty", especially when it is soaked in a little water and fried in bacon grease, just like Granny use to do with corn mush.

[GreencoatCross]

Re: Recipes for soft hardtack

After years of using Bent's hardtack and finding them too soft/delicate for my haversack, I started making my own. I bake them on decreasingly low heat for a very long time to get all moisture out of the crackers but also use a very small amount of shortening to get the "layered" look that original examples have, otherwise it would be a solid brick. After they come out of the oven I stack them up in a wooden box and let them sit until needed. They are hard enough to survive in the haversack without breaking but are easy to eat when broken apart. To soften them further I like to toast them on a split stick. Believe it or not, dry toasting hardtack quickly softens them.

[Palmyra Possum]

Re: Recipes for soft hardtack

From "Notes on Preparing Stores for the United States Army: Also on the Care of the Same, Etc." by Charles L. Kilburn, Commissary of Subsistence, U.S. Army (1863):

HARD BREAD

Should be made of best quality of superfine, or what is usually known as extra superfine flour, or better of extra and extra superfine, (half and half.) Hard bread should be white, crisp, light, and exhibit a flaky appearance when broken. If tough, solid and compact, it is evident the fault is either in the stock, manufacture, or baking; it should not present the appearance of dried paste. If tough and pasty, it is probably manufactured from grown wheat, or spring wheat of an inferior kind… To make good hard bread, it is essential to employ steam. The dough should be mixed as dry as possible; this is in fact very essential, and too much stress cannot be placed on it. Good stock, dry mixed, and thoroughly baked (not "dried" or "scalded,") will necessarily give good hard bread. If salt is to be used, it should be mixed with the water used to mix the dough. Both salt and water should be clean. Bread put up with the preceding requirements should keep a year; but, as a usual thing, our best bread as now made for army use, will keep but about three months… The cupidity of the contracting baker induces him to pack his bread as soon as it comes from the oven, and before the moisture has been completely expelled by drying. Bread of this kind hangs on breaking; it will also be soft to the pressure of the finger nail when broken, when it should be crisp and brittle.

I find it interesting that the only reference to softness refers to improperly packed bread.

"Cupidity." There's a word I need to slip into my lexicon more often.

[GrumpyDave]

Re: Recipes for soft hardtack

The second part of my comment is a response to what I presumed Doug was asking about which was a recipe for his hardtack, which is the point of the thread. Of the few times I made it, a few crackers sat around for quite a while and became very hard to the point I could not bite into it. But made correctly and used within a reasonable timeframe, I have found it personally to be "tasty", especially when it is soaked in a little water and fried in bacon grease, just like Granny use to do with corn mush.

The hobby's field skills have become so weakened, I doubt very much many who read here have even tried soaking or frying their crackers. Let alone ever heard of it. Much like the ability to stay at events in inclement weather, that too is unfortunate.

As for me, it's great boiled with water, (if you happen to be near a sutler; condensed milk), apples and a bit of sugar. It's not bad dunked in your coffee 'neither.

[JimKindred]

Re: Recipes for soft hardtack

The hobby's field skills have become so weakened,......

Coupled with a significant drop over the years in research skills that has had somewhat of a negative effect to say the least.

[GrumpyDave]

Re: Recipes for soft hardtack

Has the initial poster tried searching the OR's for how much and how often "soft" bread was issued? You'd be amazed.

[Ambrose Bierce]

Re: Recipes for soft hardtack

Has the initial poster tried searching the OR's for how much and how often "soft" bread was issued? You'd be amazed.

Probably not, Dave.

Got to love books and "Hardtack and Coffee" comes to mind.

[JimKindred]

Re: Recipes for soft hardtack

Based on a recently removed post it appears this thread is starting to drift off into fantasy land. Let's stick to documented period sources if we can't do that the thread will be closed.