The excess dough you set aside can be shaped by hand or rolled out for additional biscuits. If you use the small mason jar lid, it will allow you to store the finished hardtack in the next size up Mason jar. You could skip the rolling pin altogether and just shape these by hand if you want to. Using the chopstick, writing pen, twig, or another similarly shaped object, poke holes into each square.
Gently transfer the squares to your cooking sheet, cooking stone, or cooking screen. If you use a screen, you can slightly reduce the cooking time and end up with a somewhat crispier biscuit. Bake them for 2 hours, then flip them and bake and dry them for another 2 hours. It may also help to kill off any bacteria or wild yeast that may accidentally become a part of your mix, so this may marginally add to the longevity of your final biscuit.
After 2 hours, you will want to take them out of the oven and flip them. They may stick a little to the cookie sheet but will come up with a spatula. A silicone cooking sheet or non-stick cookie sheet would be ideal for this process. When you take them from the oven, transfer them to a wire rack for cooling. If you are in a dry and not humid environment, you can leave them in the air a little longer to further dry out. Once they are at room temperature, you can vacuum seal them or use mylar storage bags and oxygen absorbers to store them for maybe years or more.
The main thing is to keep them free from oxygen, moisture, or any insects like the weevil or maggots. If it was all you had to eat, you could survive on it alone for two to three months, and when adequately stored, it can stay intact for well over a hundred years.
That makes it one of the oldest and most resilient foods you could have in your prepper supplies. Hardtack is hard. It can break your teeth and loosen your fillings.
In our testing, both methods produced similar results, with light browning. One thing is for sure: turn your hardtack halfway through cooking. Those big cracks offer crevices for moisture, insects, and germs to creep in. You want your hardtack to cool slowly.
During the Civil War, some manufacturers cooled hardtack quickly to produce it as fast as possible, which led to it crumbling and falling apart in the field.
Some suggest letting it cool in the oven, but it should be just fine cooling on the counter. Hardtack, as the name suggests, should be hard, like a hockey puck. Historically, some bakers would bake it over and over again over a matter of days to draw out every bit of moisture and maximize its shelf life. But too much oven-drying can cause your hardtack to get crumbly, so waiting for it to air dry is your best bet. Hardtack was designed to be stored without much care. For short-term use, you can wrap a biscuit in a bandana to keep it clean and put it in your bag or pocket.
For long-term storage, your two biggest threats are moisture and insects, so store hardtack in a watertight container. You can bite directly into a hardtack biscuit, but that might be risky. If eating hardtack plain, break off a piece and let it melt in your mouth a while before biting down.
Try soaking a hardtack biscuit in coffee for breakfast in the morning. Just drop it in, drink the cup, and then fish out the hardtack and eat it — ideally with more coffee to wash it down. Civil War veteran John Billings wrote in his memoir Hardtack and Coffee about a dish soldiers would cook called skillygalee, in which they would soak the hardtack in cold water and then fry it in pork fat.
If you have bacon handy, fry up a few pieces lower heat will render out more fat , and then toss a piece of hardtack into the grease and fry on both sides until brown. If you carry Mountain House meals in your go-bag, you could wrap up some hardtack in a bandana and crush it with a rock or the blunt end of a hatchet and mix the hardtack in with the hot water.
You can also use hardtack to thicken up soups in the same way. Or make a quick soup by boiling hardtack in broth. Hardtack during the Civil War. Hardtack During the Civil War one of the most common meals for soldiers was a cracker-like food called hardtack. Hardtack is made from flour, water, and salt. It could last a long time- there is even hard tack from the Civil War in the museum at Manassas National Battlefield Park today!
It also was known for getting wet, which allowed mold to grow in the boxes of it that were supplied to the Army. Commonly, soldiers would soften their hardtack in coffee.
This also was also a way to help kill the little maggots and worms that lived inside of it, allowing soldiers to skim them off of the top of the coffee. For example, soldiers would sometimes mix hardtack with a can of condensed milk they bought from a sutler. However, sutlers often charged a lot of money for their supplies, so many men could not afford to pay for these goods because their money was needed to support their families back at home. Men sometimes would also forage, or look around an area, for additional ingredients that could be eaten with their hardtack.
The Confederates did not always have hardtack, because it was made from wheat flour, and wheat was not widely grown in most Confederate states, aside from Virginia and Georgia. The Confederates instead relied on two crops they grew to make their bread: corn and rice. Stir the ingredients together until the brown sugar has melted. Then, use your spoon to stir all of the ingredients together. Did you make this recipe?
Leave a review. Ann Hupe. There are a few ways that, when all used together, will come close to what you want to do. First, use a high-protein, whole-wheat flour, or add vital wheat gluten to your dough. Then, knead the dough minutes by hand or better, use a mixer with a dough setting at the risk of blowing out the motor. By activating the gluten, you will end up with a very tough dough that will not rise, as there is no yeast in this recipe.
Second, when the dough is rolled out, dock it by taking a fork and poking holes. This is an old technique used to prevent the development of huge bubbles in pizza dough. Third, lower the oven temperature and cook very slowly. Yes No. Not Helpful 0 Helpful 3.
Include your email address to get a message when this question is answered. Submit a Tip All tip submissions are carefully reviewed before being published. If you have fillings or crowns in your teeth or have gums that bleed easily, be careful when eating uncooked hardtack. It may be hard enough to break off your fillings or crowns. Helpful 2 Not Helpful 2. Related wikiHows How to. How to. More References 6. About This Article.
Co-authored by:. Co-authors: 4. Updated: March 29,
0コメント