A while back I mentioned hardtack in the article Foods That Last Forever and several people have asked what it is and how to make it. Basically, hardtack is a hard cracker made from flour, salt, and water. The great thing about hardtack is that as long as you keep it dry, it will last for years. It will even last through temperature extremes.
Because it’s inexpensive to make and lasts so long, it was once taken on long sea voyages and was called things like pilot bread, cabin bread, ship biscuit, sea biscuit, or sea bread. It was also carried by soldiers on long military campaigns and was referred to as tooth dullers, molar breakers, or sheet iron.
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I know that sounds bad, but it’s easier to eat when soaked in coffee, crumbled into soup, or fried with other foods. It was particularly popular among soldiers during the American Civil War, and to this day Civil War reenactors still make and carry hardtack with them.
Some hardtack recipes include sugar, milk or butter, but that will significantly shorten the shelf life, so I recommend making it the traditional way. It won’t taste as good, but the whole point of this is to have some food that will last a long time without going bad.
So here’s what you need:
- 3 cups of white flour
- 2 teaspoons of salt
- 1 cup of water
- A cookie sheet
- A mixing bowl
- A knife
- A common nail
Here’s how to make hardtack:
1. First, you’ll need to preheat your oven to 375°.
2. Mix the flour and salt together in a bowl.
3. Gradually mix in the water until you form a dough that doesn’t stick to your hands. It will be very sticky at first, but just keep forming it and shaping it until it’s not too sticky.
4. Next, you’ll need to use a rolling pin to flatten the dough into a square. Make sure it’s no more than half an inch thick or it won’t bake well.
5. Now carefully cut the dough into 9 squares.
6. Using the nail, make a 4×4 grid of holes in each of the squares.
7. Put all the pieces on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake them for 30 minutes.
8. Now turn the squares over and bake for another 30 minutes.
9. Remove them from the oven and let them cool off. They should look something like this:
Ideally, the hardtack should be just a little brown on each side. Every oven is different and every climate has an effect on baking time, so keep a close eye on them the first time you bake them. You don’t want to burn your first batch.
Adjust the baking time if necessary. Once it’s cool, it should almost be hard as a rock (although you can try to munch on them raw, I recommend dipping them in soup or coffee or something hot). Each piece is about 150 calories.
Like I said, the great thing about hardtack is it lasts for years without any special storage techniques. I would put it in Ziploc bags and add it to your food cache, bug out bags, and vehicle survival kits. It makes a great source of energy in emergency situations. And if you don’t like how hard it is, smash it up and mix with other foods.
Another option is to heat up the pieces and put things like butter, jelly, peanut butter, syrup, and other toppings on them. I’ve done this myself and it makes a great breakfast. My kids like it with honey or applesauce. The possibilities are endless!
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Times change and we change with the times. The goal is to make it out of whats available and practical.
As for peanut butter and rancid, peanut butter lasts a long time. Any food product can over a period of time / long time can go bad. That’s why we always keep up the pace as to what food products we have to work with and are easily available. Remember Occam’s Razor.
My husband and I were Civil War re-enactors for 15 years and decided to hone our impression. LOL We made a recipe of hardtack. In our experimenting, we found a new use for our biscuits. When baked and prepared correctly, they made great replacement plates for your plate carrier. Seriously, we had to use a hammer to break it up. We finally ended up grinding it back into flour and using it to thicken stew and such at mealtimes. It would be a great hands-on activity for kids as it involves no fancy instructions or cooking techniques.
I am constantly out in the Arizona desert. I rely on hard tack greatly. I have a bunch stored up but it’s great when it’s 100+. Hard rack replaces salt and other nutrients needed after sweating all day. It’s very reliable. And definitely field tested. Semper Fi
If you’re going to Alaska, just ask in any grocery store for the sailor boy pilot bread. It’s made in Seattle but 98% of it is sold in Alaska. I found it once on the Olympic Peninsula too. You’d be hard pressed to find an Alaska Natives’ house that doesn’t have pilot bread. Hard tack by the box.
Would adding carrot powder or other vegetable powders (other than garlic or onion) shorten the shelf life of hardtack?
Can I add herbs (basil, oregano) for flavor without affecting the lifespan?
It can reduce the shelf life some, but to counteract that, you could vacuum seal it and it should still last years.
A tiny bit of cinnamon will add a nice flavor and as a bonus, no bugs! Most insects are repelled by the spice and it doesn’t shorten the shelf life…
can you use bleached flour
I don’t see why not.
Hardtack has a shelf life of 100 yrs! Yes, that’s what i said. You can grind it up into flour again if you want to. Basically, it was used as a safe way to keep flour, without having the powder version to deal with while you traveled like in the wagon-train days. After all, it is only flour, some salt and water, dehydrated. It was also easy to tuck into small places instead of one huge sack taking up a lot of room in one place. Perhaps the salt kept the bugs out as well. I know bags of flour had a problem with weevils.
What makes hardtack so undesirable is the fact that it is rock hard, dense, no air inside. A leavening ingredient like baking powder would resolve that, wouldn’t it? Baking powder is primarily Cornstarch, a ‘forever’ food product, and sodium bicarbonate. So my question is; does baking powder help, and keep just as long?
Baking powder wasnt a common item in the 18-19th centuries, water and flour was easy, little salt if you had it.
In his excellent autobiographical book “Hardtack and Coffee”, John D. Billings commented on using hardtack in “skillygalee” and “lobscouse”. “Lobscouse” sounded like beef stew or beef soup with hardtack added and “skillygalee” just sounded disgusting. (Billing’ book was written about his service in the “Federal Army” (US Army) during the Civil War.)
Do you have any page featuring either of these two “delicacies?
Lol so I am making this in my kitchen with the bare essentials that most kitchens have and I should go out to the garage to get a nail to make the holes? Not a knife or fork that are inches from my grasp but a nail in my garage that is not made with food grade materials and will probably have a toxic coating that will need to be scrubbed off? Just saying, kinda funny, lol.
Ha! Yea, but with a fork it’s harder to get just one hole and with a knife it doesn’t make a perfectly round hole. Maybe an ice pick? Or maybe just some toothpick?
I bought skewers because they’re a little bigger than toothpicks and don’t break easily.
A wooden golf tee works great
I used a meat thermometer
You’e kidding right? Its a tried and true method that has been around for hundreds of years and you worry about “food grade materials”? The baking process alone will negate any contaminants and any “toxic substance” on the nail such as lacquer will be vaporized if any at all is present on the nail. Seems like you might just want to stick to getting a bag of Oreos at the supermarket if tried and true historical methods offend anyone’s yuppie predilections. Happy eating.
If I was trying to store this for awhile and just put it away, if I used Mylar bags should I use an oxygen absorber or no? Thanks
It should last for years regardless, but an O2 absorber or two can’t hurt.
Ok cool. I appreciate the response!
I wonder if adding a sprinkle of broth/soup base or bullion would effect the storage life? They would add excellent flavor to the hardtack.
I’ve read a decent amount about hardtack. Don’t add broth or soup base to the hardtack, or it will not last as long (if you want to understand more about that fact, read about salt, osmosis vs reverse-osmosis). Anyhow, add salt, broth, or whatever to the product when you want to actually cook it and consume it, but not when you are making it for storage.
I’m assuming this is plain flour, not self-rising?
Correct.
What about adding spices like cumin, italian seasoning, sage or even chili powder?
Absolutely that sounds deliteful Perhaps you can bake us a pie as well before we come to steal your food.
Can’t tell if tomtrk is joking but that’s hilarious.
Cathy – lots of spices have preservative properties that protect foods from spoilage in hot weather. Think of the all the spice in foods from India, South America, China, Africa. Spices with good flavors also add incentive to keep eating food even if it’s hard and bland.
So I think you’re on to something.
tomtrk, stop LARPing
Is this what the Bible calls unleavened bread ?
The Old Testament is the Jewish Torah, so if you’re asking about that, then “unleavened bread” is Matzoh: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matzo You can usually find it in the grocery store around Easter (Passover) time. If you live near a Jewish/kosher bakery, they might offer it at more times a year.
Unleavened bread does not have yeast in it and is softer than hardtack. So the bread does not rise like it would if you were making normal bread or biscuit.
Matzah bread is: 1 cup flour, 1 tsp olive oil, and 1/3 cup warm water. (no salt) Knead into smooth ball, divide dough into 8 fairly equal pieces, roll thin to about 6 inches diameter, pierce with fork many times -and bake at 425 degrees for 3 min. on one side and 2 minutes on the other side. You can eat them like crackers with butter and salt on them, or use them for Communion for yourself or for your church.
I would leave the salt out altogether and just cook the flour and water to make hardtack. During the Civil War hardtack wasn’t made with salt in it because they usually ate it with salt pork which has so much salt you have a hard time eating it without rinsing it first. The easy way to eat hardtack is to add it to some type of soup. In modern times, the simplest trick for long shelf like and good flavor is to keep a flavor packet from ramen noodles with your hardtack and either cook both into a broth or sprinkle on top as you bite off small bits.
Just my $0.02
Learning as I go…………The flavor packet could be just about any you might have or make…Love what I’m learning…
The salt is part of what makes it last so long. Salt is a natural preservative.
Hardtack made right and stored right will last longer than anyone would actually store the stuff for unless you plan to make it when you are 30 and eat it when you are in your late 70s. Salt is added to improve the flavor. Keep salt out if you want to make historically accurate Hardtack.
For survival needs stockpiling some Hardtack add the salt, why not. You have salt now, who knows if you will later. For a survival “bugout” situation where salt is limited or gone you can make the tack with just water and flour
I have a question. Can it be made really thin like crackers?
Modern Pilot crackers are pretty much thin hardtack. The only difference is the type of flour they use. You will have to experiment with oven times but I know it works. Don’t leave out the holes or dimples in the dough. They make it much easier to eat the thicker hardtack and help the crackers stay flat.
Look, if you add something to hardtack that makes it taste better, but shortens the shelf life to two years, what are you out? A couple of bucks for a bag of flour? The solution is to spend a couple of hours every two years making a new batch. No big deal, but you wind up with a much more palatable product.
I would say that adding it probably would. Honey keeps because it is made by bees to be anti-bacterial. Once diluted in the batter it would lose that property. But you could store some honey with it to put on it before eating.
Had been reading about hardtack from several sources, and wanted to try it… Baked up a batch from your recipe, it was great! I am going to make some, and put it in some ‘seal a meal’ packs, and put it in my emergency pack. Thank you!
If you’re making some hardtack for a survival kit, you’ll definitely want to bake it at least twice.
This ensures that most of the moisture is drawn out of the cracker, and that makes them last a lot longer.
What do you mean bake twice? How would you do it?
http://www.6thtx.org/Making%20Hardtack.htm
There you go. There is more of a in depth way to make them. Its all basically the same recipe, only with the extra baking step. If you don’t want to click basically, after you have baked this the one the other side, lower the oven temp to 200 or so and then bake for 30 minutes more.
I’m planning on making a bugout bag, well more like a survival pack, because I’m becoming more paranoid as I age, so I’m looking up how to make these things and stuff like pemmkin, and stuff like that. ((I’m thinking of adding a vegan ‘all in one’ powder to pemmikin, but I don’t know how well that will work, it COULD work pretty well. But I’ll have to do it to see.))
What about peanut butter protein powder? Can that be added and still have a long shelf life?
you could try it and experiment with it, but if you want to also increase shelf life, You might want to reconsider baking the hardtack couple times more. British Royal Navy use to have there hardtack baked 3-4 times before packaging, to insure that it would last couple years on a boat.
i really want to try making this sometime. i’m currently looking for various different ways to prepare it that would add flavor. i have heard of someone frying it in bacon grease and i have also heard of it being served covered in gravy. makes me wonder what culinary possibilities exist for hardtack.
Anything with fat content or sugar will greatly reduce the shelf life of hard tack unless your going to eat it within a couple months.
Did you just use the words culinary and hardtack in the same sentence? SMH…
The only thing I ever heard of causing a detriment to hard tack were weevils, but that adds protein.
Just make sure you only chews the lesser of two weevils.
This joke gave me diabetes.
My husband and I are Civil War reenactors and we know all about hardtack. I made some once just to see if I could. It came out hard, really hard, like cement hard. If you needed to replace the plates in your flak jacket, hard tack would do the trick. Seriously though, I put a couple pinches of garlic salt in it to make it taste better. It tasted ok, but you really need to crumble it or soak it in milk or dunk in your coffee. It didn’t stay hard for as long as I thought it would, but I only had it in a ziplock bag. The next batch I made I sealed it in my food saver and that was 3 years ago. Still hard as a rock.
You might try wrapping it in a bandana, helps to keep it dry!
How can I make it stay hard even after it has touched liquid?
it tastes like almost burnt pizza crust. I think it’s delicous.I remember in 5th grade I teacher made it for us because we were learning about european explorers. Everyone hated it and so they gave it all to me. Then I went home and had my mom make it. It’s my favorite food after stuffed crust pizza. Also I put nothing on it it was just plain and SO delicous
Made a batch and it was fine tasting…it also cracked a porcelain crown (no joke)…I would recommend for survival food only and then add it to soup or coffee to soften it before eating.
HONEY keeps indefinitely. Mix it with a little water, it ferments and turns to alcoholic mead. So yes, I would say adding honey to hard tack will dramatically shorten the shelf life.
Meadtack. I can see possibilities.
Not very good ones, or useful, but possibilities.
The idea is to add flavoring to it when you eat it, not when you make it. Traditionally, they were soaked in coffee, milk or gravy before eating. Or, you can soak them overnight in some milk or water and then fry them in some sort of oil in the morning.
Does powdered garlic or onion reduce the shelf life
I tried to make this and followed instructions and the dough is way too sticky.
Just need to keep adding more flour until its not sticky.
OR, you could just add the water slower like the directions say!
I can’t imagine why it would affect the shelf life unless there’s some reaction between the honey and flour but I really doubt it.
Would adding a bit of baking soda shorten the shelf life?
What about a drop of flavoring like vanilla extract or almond extract which are mostly alcohol – would that affect shelf life?
I am definitely making this for my emergency bag. Thanks for the recipe!
can you make gluten free hardtack?
good question. I’ve never done it, but you can buy gluten-free flour online and try it out.
I am making my first hard tack as I write this text It is about 3/8 inch thick.
Yes, it’s called rice. Best to soak it in hot liquid before you eat it or it will be very hard. 😉
Oils in Whole Wheat flour will cause hardtack to go rancid in time! For longer storage, use refined white flour only!
Thanks for the tip!
Ah. Good thing I go through hardtack relatively quickly.
I need to get around to making pemmican. Pemmican and hardtack sandwiches… yum!
Historically, only the very wealthy used refined flour. Did the hardtack made years ago–from whole grain flour–go bad, then? I’ve not heard of it ever going rancid.
I know it defeats the purpose a little bit but I made some and added onion powder to half and garlic powder to the other half and they came out delicious. No need to stay alive by eating bland food when you can have something with a little flavor!
How does it defeat the purpose? Milk an sugar defeat the purpose because it feeds molds and microbes but onion powder and garlic powder are antimicrobial, I think.
The shelf life of Onion and Garlic powder is 3-4 years with the flavor decreasing each year. So I would think it might reduce the shelf life of the hard tack if stored longer than that. Proteins, sugars, fruits are definite no no’s unless eaten in a few months time and sealed.
Would adding seeds, like rye or sesame greatly shorten its safe eating span? How would adding powdered peanut butter effect its longevity?
I think either of those–especially powdered peanut butter–would significantly shorten the shelf life. The both have traces of oils that could go rancid.