Hard Tack, dog biscuits for people

Sylvrfalcn

Sylvrfalcn

Joined
Jun 4, 2002
Messages
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Ship's biscuits, sea biscuits, hard tack, tooth breakers, don't matter what you call 'em, they were a staple food item for soldiers and sailors for a long, long, time. Poor barstids. :( They ain't nothing but flour, water, and a bit of salt (ever made homemade Play-do for the kids?). I've baked a couple batches now, I say baked, more like firing bricks :eek: I even went to the pains to make a "cookie cutter" of a sort, that squares 'em away to "traditional" specifications, i.e. 3" x 3", 1/2" thick, and having four rows of four holes. Okay, so they're fairly nutritious (I use whole wheat flour), and they'll last virtually forever if properly stored (somewhere between several months and several years, or so I hear), but I'm telling you lads, they're practically inedible unless you bust 'em up and soak 'em in something first. Apparently busting 'em up with the butt of your musket and soaking them in your coffee was the way to go during the Civil War. Had a couple this morning for breakfast, soaked 'em in a nice mug of hot chocolate, tasty, but I'm still half convinced you burn about as many calories chewing the dayumed stuff, as what you're taking in.:rolleyes: To think, I've actually heard troopies bitchin' about MREs. . . . . .wimps. :p :D

Sarge
 
You've read how once they'd been in a tin or barrel for a while, the folks eating would absently rap the hardtack on the table, to knock out most of the weevils before chewing? Ahem. In some ways, I like the time I'm living in.

On the upside, weevils would add a bit more protein.;)
 
I've been baking and eating these for a few months now. Go well with self-made peanut butter :)
 
I made some for a short while several years back. You can add some oat flour or flak for prehaps more nutrition. Did yours warp after being baked? Mine did and so it really negated any packing efficency benifits. I later switched to using a round can as a cutter.

If soaked in coffee or soup for too long, I found them to get too soggy and unpalatable. Otherwise I decided they are too hard on the teeth.
 
kel_aa said:
I made some for a short while several years back. You can add some oat flour or flak for prehaps more nutrition. Did yours warp after being baked? Mine did and so it really negated any packing efficency benifits. I later switched to using a round can as a cutter.

If soaked in coffee or soup for too long, I found them to get too soggy and unpalatable. Otherwise I decided they are too hard on the teeth.
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Haven't had any warp on me so far, apparently the size and placement of those four rows of four holes is important to allowing moisture to escape for even baking. Hmmmm, round cutter. Round biscuits as hard as a brick, sound like what my ex-wife used to pass off as buttermilk biscuits. No kidding, she burst into tears one time when I threw one at the cat, "you're trying to kill him". :rolleyes: :o

Sarge
 
Josh Feltman said:
Hard Tack directions for dummies?
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Google it Josh, you'll find a veritable plethora to pick from. The recipe I'm using comes from a book titled "Nelson's Navy", and calls for two pounds of whole wheat flour, a quarter ounce of salt, and enough water to make a stiff dough. To bake the stuff right, you bake it twice, once at a high temp (375) for 1/2 hour, let 'em sit for awhile, then bake again at a lower temp (250) for another half hour. This supposedly makes sure there's no moisture trapped inside that could lead to spoilage.

Sarge
 
Cool. I'll give it a try. I've tried little pieces before at the Civil War Days out at the college, but always wanted to try making it myself. Guess I should pull the ol' muzzleloader out first in case I need some assistance breaking it up.
 
Last time I made it, the tack would clatter if you dropped it with a sound just like a ceramic tile. You *could* eat it without dunking, but you had to gnaw on it like a rat- for a long time.

Milk Bones® rock! No real flavor but full of vitamins. A money-maker on a dare.


Mike
 
For those of you not given to masochism,

try adding some baking powder to the flour, salt and water, mixing a lot, and fill the entire 10" cast-iron frypan with dough. You can add an egg if you like. Cover the bottom and sides of the frying pan with grease, butter, or margarine.

Cover, cook over low heat until you smell it, then flip the entire thing, and cook a little more.

Camp bread. Good stuff.


(Sarge's hard-tack recipe can also be found by googling "how to make a hockey puck.")
 
Rat Finkenstein said:
Dog Biscuits are not too bad. I have eaten them before. (not that I ate more than a bite)
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There is a serious side effect of eating dog biscuits. Makes you want to lick your . . . . . . . . oops, forgot this is a family fourm. :eek:

Makes you want to chase cars! Yeah, there! :D :D
 
When I was three, my dad bought a ranch in British Columbia, about 30 miles out of Williams lake. We used to go there every August to make hay for the winter. Someone went into town -- a 12 hour journey, 70 miles one way -- about every other week. My mom cooked breakfast, lunch and dinner on a wood stove.

One morning she fired up the wood stove, and after breakfast she put three loaves of bread in the oven, and promptly forgot about them. A couple hours later she stoked the stove to make lunch, and several hours after that did the same for dinner. The next day she remembered the "bread."

The loaves were baked/fired in a full sized bread pan, but when she took them out they were about 4" long and 2 1/2" in diameter, and coal black. She threw them outside to the dogs, but the dogs liked having teeth, so they refused to touch them.

August passed, and we returned to Oregon, my brothers and sister and I to school, my dad to his rock quarry, and my mother to her law practise. The next August, shortly after we arrived, one of my cousins found one of the loaves, which we put into service as a football. It served admirably, but you had to be sure you either caught or got the hell out of the way when someone threw it to you.

Maybe if you gave the same treatment to hard tack, you could use it for building materials/sharpening stones.:D

James
 
Sounds like Bannock on steroids . What I like about Bannock is the many ways you can make it . In a frypan , in the oven , wrapped around a stick over a fire .

I always wanted to try ships biscuits .
I wonder what a little molasses would do to liven them up ? Is that sacrilege ?
 
Military tech.
Remember that it was Napoleon around 1800 that offered a 10,000 frank reward for a better way to preserve food. Some frenchy came up with the idea of boiling food after it was stuck in a jar killing the bacteria and so the invention of early MRE's was born.

Oh yeah, it was almost 50 years after the invention of the can before the "can opener" was invented and lead in the cans themselves as well as in the canning process lead to heavy metal poisoning and insanity of many sailors instead of scurvy.

It makes you wonder what they will one day discover about the preservatives we use today.
 
I've made several batches of hard_tack. We feed them to the dogs when we run low on biscuits.

The batch we have currently was made right after the first of the year, not bad, but not what I would call good.

(My Wife says they suck...)

Whats next, we gonna make some bully beef?
 
On submarines, space as at a premium. Bread takes up a lot of space but flour does not, so the bread is generally baked fresh each morning. You might think that this is a good thing and it was -- sometimes -- but it depends a lot on the quality of the cook. With a lousy cook, unintended hilarity could ensue.

The cook that I'm referring to specifically had a thing about yeast...he almost always forgot it. We called the resulting abominations "Florida Flatbread," after the name of the boat. Baked vigorously in a 440V convection oven (and forgotten) while the cook went on extended smoke breaks, these were often hard enough that they could be thrown against bulkheads and would shatter. (The bread, not the bulkheads, but it was a close thing.)

In spite of all this the cook in question was remarkably sensitive about criticism of his cooking and took great offense when these roofing shingles were thrown at him during mealtimes. We discussed throwing tools, monkey's fists and hand grenades instead, but penalties for murder remain high in the USN and the flatbread could be considered a less-than-lethal option. Matters came to a head one fateful night when one of the nuclear technicians scrawled, "You forgot the %&^*ing yeast again, you $*%&ing idiot!" on one of the "dinner rolls" and slid it through the slot of the comments card box, where it found its way to the supply officer and made its rounds through the wardroom and, later, the rest of the boat. I still chuckle about it today.

My point? Hardtack is alive and well in today's navy. We just don't like to talk about it.

I'm actually going to fire some of these up this weekend, Sarge. Thanks for the idea.
 
The guy who invented dog biscuits originally got the idea from watching sailors feeding hardtack to dogs when they came into port.
 
coyotebc said:
The guy who invented dog biscuits originally got the idea from watching sailors feeding hardtack to dogs when they came into port.
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It sounds more like a guy watching someone feed a dog biscuits invented hard tack . L:O:L
 
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