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Tasty tasty Hardtack?!

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Speaking of syrup anyone notice that KING syrup is no longer being made, now on the search for a suitable replacement, any suggestions. The goya crackers were good with a bit of warm milk just enough to make them moist and a dizzle of KING syrup.
 
Speaking of syrup anyone notice that KING syrup is no longer being made, now on the search for a suitable replacement, any suggestions. The goya crackers were good with a bit of warm milk just enough to make them moist and a dizzle of KING syrup.

Make your own golden syrup.
 
Ever occur to you folks that the reason your "hardtack" or "ship's biscuits" are uber-hard is because you're making them wrong? ;)

I think you are heading in a technically accurate, yet wrong direction here.

The hardness of hardtack determines how long it lasts. There is literally no purpose to making softer hard tack, as the softer it is, the faster it degrades with time and exposure. VFOOD6260 - VAT Food - HMRC internal manual - GOV.UK

One of the key aspects of producing government service grade hard tack is the amount of compression it goes through in preparation. Hard tack dough was put through a hammer mill to increase density/hardness (in high quality versions).

While the flour was softer, this was considered a drawback to be overcome, not a feature.
 
I respectively disagree. Bran and whole wheat flour is what was found in old biscuit. This was food bought for sailors and soldiers. Men who came from the lowest levels of society.
Tax base was very low. There wasn’t a lot of money to toss around.
They made it from the cheapest grain they had, flour that was heavy in bran and chaff.
Dry is what keeps the bread not hardness. Biscuit means baked twice. It was low and slow, often over two days.
When I tried LDs methot I got a bread that keeps well and can be dipped in coffee or added to soup and isn’t a tooth breaker. Just plain flour and water will make a rock hard bread.
I made a labscouse at an event and added broke up bread, even after boiling for an hour I still got a piece that broke a tooth.
Yet we hear of men dipping their hard tack in coffee for a few minutes and eating it bite by bite. You can do that with lots of bran in it.
Soft is relative. You could still make an xylophone out of it.
 
I respectively disagree. Bran and whole wheat flour is what was found in old biscuit. This was food bought for sailors and soldiers. Men who came from the lowest levels of society.
Tax base was very low. There wasn’t a lot of money to toss around.
They made it from the cheapest grain they had, flour that was heavy in bran and chaff.
Dry is what keeps the bread not hardness.
And what keeps bread dry in a high moisture environment is decreasing surface area. And that requires serious pressure. Manual compression of the dough is how they decreased the ability of the bread to absorb that moisture. Without that pressure, no matter how dry the bread starts, it will absorb moisture during storage and spoil quickly.

I'm not disputing the ingredients, I'm pointing out that ships bread was hard on purpose.

If you're making hard tack without using some form of serious pressure on the dough, like a hydraulic 6 ton press, you aren't making true ships bread. I used to press it using double trash bags, a couple planks and driving over it with a car, prior to getting a press.

This is also where some of the shapes and designs on the cakes came from. The dough was minted in a dough press, much like a coin.
 
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When was that made? Is that sixteenth-eighteenth century? It looks mid nineteenth and the bread looks like WTBS hard tack as opposed to eighteenth century ships bread
 
"Speaking of syrup anyone notice that KING syrup is no longer being made"

KING syrup is still listed as available on Amazon. Don't know about grocery shelves. Gotta admit the idea of a few Goya crackers broken into warm milk with a drizzle of light molasses sounds darn good. And a cup of fresh perked coffee to sip with it.

Jeff
 
King syrup was a mainstay since I can remember years ago it came in 1 gal. tins with a snap on metal lid like a gal. of paint, Done some checking and was told the company that made it went out of business, so the search is on as I use at least 2 gal. every year when making sweet deer bologna, sweet jerkey and other various applications such as the goya cracker bed time snack or thick sliced homemade bread smeared with king syrup and a glass of milk, The closest I have came to it is KARO dark syrup almost same flavor but not as thick. Will have to run a small test batch of deer bologna and see how it works out. Also check the price on Amazon I could buy it around here something like 4 dollars for a large bottle I believe amazon was around 20 dollars if they can get it. I will have to make a trip to Lancaster Penna. and talk to the Amish folks to see what they are using for shoo fly pie another favorite.
 
A ship's biscuit from 1848. I have a period account of making biscuit, will dig it up and post.
 

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When was that made? Is that sixteenth-eighteenth century? It looks mid nineteenth and the bread looks like WTBS hard tack as opposed to eighteenth century ships bread

Food preservation changed significantly in the 19th century with industrialization and the invention of the metal can. (Thank you, Napolean Bonaparte). Whereas ships bread/hard tack was primarily stored in bags and boxes prior to the invention of the metal can, post invention of the metal container, preserving food for long periods of time became much easier.

This is pure speculation on my part, but I imagine the need for compression of the dough lessened once you could create a truly dry environment for bread to live in.
 
It was hard, but not as hard as modren pure flour and water and pinch of salt. Mine is not pressed and I’ve bread over a year old and ‘still fresh’.
I’ve never used a press.
I'd love to do an experiment on both kinds of flour, with pressed and not pressed. I think it would be a worthy effort.
 
William Burney’s guide to making "Navy Biscuits":
Circa 1812

“The process of biscuit-making for the navy is simple and ingenious, and is nearly as follows. A large lump of dough, consisting merely of flower and water, is mixed up together, and placed exactly in the centre of a raised platform, where a man sits upon a machine, called a horse, and literally rides up and down throughout its whole circular direction, till the dough is equally indented, and this is repeated till the dough is sufficiently kneaded. In this state it is handed over to a second workman, who, with a large knife, puts it in a proper state for the use of those bakers who more immediately attend the oven. They are five in number; and their different departments are well calculated for expedition and exactness. The first man on the farthest side of a large table moulds the dough, till it has the appearance of muffins, and which he does two together, with each hand; and then delivers them over to the man on the other side of the table, who stamps them on both sides with a mark, and throws them on a smaller table, where stands the third workman, whose business is merely to separate the different pieces into two, and place them under the hand of him who supplies the oven, whose work of throwing or chucking the biscuits on the peel must be performed with the greatest exactness and regularity. The fifth arranges them in the oven, and is so expert, that though the different biscuits are thrown to him at the rate of seventy in a minute, the peel is always disengaged in time to receive them separately. So much critical exactness and neat activity occur in the exercise of this labour, that it is difficult to decide whether the palm of excellence is due to the moulder, the maker, the splitter, the chucker, or the depositor; all of them, like the wheels of a machine, seeming to be actuated by the same principle. The business is to deposit in the oven seventy biscuits in a minute; and this is accomplished with the regularity of a clock; the clack of the peel, during its motion in the oven, operating like the pendulum. The biscuits thus baked are kept in repositories, which receive warmth from being placed in drying lofts over the ovens, till they are sufficiently dry to be packed into bags, without danger of getting mouldy; and when in such a state, they are then packed into bags, of an hundred weight each, and removed into store-house for immediate use.”
 
Four pieces to a pound, one pound to a man per day, six hundred ships in the British navy during the Napoleonic wars, 200 ships of the line with six to eight hundred men per ship, Four hundred ships with crews of fifty to two hundred and fifty men. Each getting four pieces a day. Them bakers was busy boys.
 
George Dodd, in Volume V of his extraordinary series British Manufacturers (London: 1808-1881) tells us that in making ships biscuit,

'The dough was‥taken from the trough and put on a wooden platform called the break. On this platform worked a roller, called the break⁓staff.‥ One end‥was loosely attached by a kind of staple to the wall, and the breakman, riding or sitting on the other end, worked the roller to and fro over the dough, by an uncouth jumping or shuffling movement'.


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