Hard-tack recipes?

[George]

I do much prefer those biskits over hard/tack

Me, too. I took some along on a little outing, yesterday, and with a cup of hot sassafras tea sweetened with maple sugar they hit the spot on a cold day.





I don't understand all this talk of soft wheat, yeast, etc., to make ship biscuit soft and edible like plain bread. I think they were made to store for long periods, and were not intended to eat as a snack, more as an item to crush up and use in stuff, thicken stews, etc.

Spence

 

[coloradoclyde]

Dang! Spence your making me hungry.

I don't understand all this talk of soft wheat, yeast, etc., to make ship biscuit soft and edible like plain bread.

Agreed but what is that delicious looking bread on your plate.? :grin:

 

[George]

Plain no-knead yeast bread, the one that's supposed to be soft and edible. :haha:

Spence

 

[Stophel]

Ships biscuit is basically long term survival food, that's it! Eat it because you have to!

My own quest is for something SIMPLE that even I can make (I DESPISE cooking, and avoid it at all costs) that I can carry with me into the woods... assuming I ever get to do so...

Oh, and I just made some of the "1759 biscuits" and dangit, I forgot to put in the butter! Oh well, they're good with butter on them! :haha:

 

[Stophel]

Here's an interesting article:

http://www.westernexplorers.us/Biscuits_Crackers_Hard_Tack_2010_SKWier.pdf

Looks like you can pretty much play around with the basic ingredients (flour, eggs, milk, sugar, butter, salt) and come up with whatever you want and probably somebody in the 18th century printed a recipe that is close to what you came up with! :haha:

 

[George]

That is an interesting article, thanks.

The description of ship biscuit/hardtack states plainly that anything added to the recipe, such as milk, eggs, butter, would cause the bread to go bad quite quickly. They are made of flour, water and maybe salt, period. No way they can be anything but hard, and they were intended to be so. They were sometimes baked 3-4 times to make them as dry as possible, because drier equated to longer storage time. Biscuits and crackers were a different animal in the 18th century, and anything could be added to them, because they were meant to be eaten fairly soon, spoilage wasn't a problem.

Spence

 

[Stophel]

The "colonial baker" article I posted earlier showed how even salt was frowned upon, because salt would attract moisture from the air. Moisture=bad.

I believe if I baked enough of my ship's biscuits, I could dry lay a house foundation with them! :haha: I think that normally (if possible) they would be soaked in water (or whatever) to soften them up, or put in soup. In my brief experiments with them, I can tell you it takes a LOT of soaking to soften them up. Even soaking for an hour or so just barely penetrates the outer layers. I even boiled one with little better results! But again, mine are "hard red wheat".

 

[Loyalist Dave]

Yes, Spence, I think the fellow in the video from the link found an actual "biscuit" recipe, and is thinking that's the same thing as "ship's biscuit", but he probably doesn't understand that in 1753 and today, in English English, "biscuit" is what we who speak American English call a cookie...which explains the egg, butter, and the sugar.

LD

 

[coloradoclyde]

Some biskits have a little "bite" to them.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

:rotf:

:hatsoff:

LD

 

[Sean Gadhar]

Dang it Dave, 4 ingredients and I still messed it up

Thought sure it said teaspoon of salt :redface:





I thought I would send some with my sons Unit on maneuvers so they can judge how much MREs have improved, or haven't.

I put the King's Arrow on, as stolen rations are always more exciting then issued rations :grin:

 

[coloradoclyde]

4 ingredients? I thought hardtack had only 3 :idunno:

Without salt they would be darn near inedible......a teaspoon per batch sounds about right......or did you put a teaspoon per biscuit?

When your son invades texas he can give then to all the captives. :haha:

 

[Loyalist Dave]

Nothing wrong with less salt, or omitting the salt. :thumbsup:

LD

 

[Sean Gadhar]

4 ingredients? I thought hardtack had only 3 :idunno:

Per Dave on page one of this topic

Ship's Biscuit
3 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1 cup whole wheat bran
1 level tablespoon, sea salt
water

The Whole wheat pastry flour is a softer flour then todays white & the bran is to make it more like the low grade flour that would have been in a government contract ship biscuit.

 

[coloradoclyde]

I see.... I thought ships biscut and hard tack were slightly different. Doesn't matter. How did they taste. Did you bake them twice.

 

[Sean Gadhar]

I see.... I thought ships biscut and hard tack were slightly different. Doesn't matter. How did they taste. Did you bake them twice.

I never did say ships biscuit in the photo post did I :redface: sorry

I liked the taste BUT I am dieting and eat bread at most only on our "cheat day" once every two weeks, so about anything might taste good to me.

My understanding was that Ship's Biscuits were sized to be 4 to the pound, what I made are likely 8 or even 10 to the pound. I baked once at 200 f for 2 hours. But these are thinner and smaller then the real thing,so that may be why one baking seemed plenty :idunno:

They are HARD but you can eat them, if you have had a gingersnap (the home made thin flat meant to be hard already kind) that was left out too long and dried out, you have an idea about what they are like.

I seem to detect an outer and an inner texture, If I had made them full size it might be more distinct :idunno:

 

[Loyalist Dave]

Yes the recipe came about due to several questions that I had...

First, the "hardtack" and the ship's biscuit that I'd tried to eat, were absolutely not chewable...yet I had read that the sailors ate them without softening. So what was wrong with the recipe of whole wheat flour that I was using?

Then I found out the wheat used to make modern whole wheat flour is much higher in gluten, than 18th century wheat, and the whole wheat flour made from it.

Then I found out the cheapest possible grade of flour was used..."ship's stuff" which had a lot of "chaff" in it.

So with the proper flour and added fiber (the wheat bran)...voila...a very hard, but chewable "ship's biscuit" recipe was devised. Actually...it might be a bit light on the "fiber"...

I haven't found any references as to size, so I just used a biscuit cutter that I use for modern biscuits. I've heard that the sailors simply grabbed or were issued a "handful" of the things.

:idunno:

I don't know how far back Skillygalee goes, but basically fry up some fatty pork (bacon, fatback, etc) and use crumbled up ships biscuit or hardtack to soak up the grease. (You might want to boil salt-pork a couple of times before frying to take out the salt)

LD

 

[Sean Gadhar]

I found this PDF that seems quite informative On our sea biscuit

http://colonialbaker.net/A Summary of Reproducing the 18th Century English Sea Biscuit.pdf

"The recipe given will make 1 ½ pounds of dough. This amount can be divided into three to five
pieces to make one ration of biscuit. The water lost by baking and drying the biscuits will reduce the bread’s
weight by 1/3 and give you the proper weight for each biscuit of the given size."


Besides the
lack of mention of salt in any documents on biscuits, we also have one poignant definition of a biscuit from
1701 that empathizes the lack of salt: “Sea-Bisket- of excellent use for the Sea, because baked without Salt,
and well dried”
8

8 Samuel Jeake, A compleat body of arithmetic, (London, 1701), 74


"One English biscuit from 1784 is in the collections of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich,
London and can be seen on their website.
13
The dimensions of this biscuit are 95mm (3¾ inches) diameter
by 10mm (9/16") thick"

(I FAILED TO FIND THAT BISCUIT. but found)

http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/563181.html

I want you all to know you are in large part to blame, that I get excited about finding a paper about making the plainest biscuit known to man :haha:

 

[coloradoclyde]

I still prefer the biscuits I posted way back at the beginning of this topic....they are at least edible and tasty. :grin:

 

[Loyalist Dave]

well....

Go three days in the woods w/o any food, and the recipe I came up with is tasty too....situation situation situation

(sort of a play on "location location location")

:rotf:

LD