Hard Tack
Hard tack is a cracker/biscuit flat-bread used during long sea voyages and military campaigns before the introduction of canning as a primary food-source. Mostly inedible for dry and hard preservation, it was usually dunked in water, brine, coffee, or other liquids, or cooked into a skillet meal. This cracker was little more than flour and water which had been baked hard and would keep for months as long as it was…
Ingredients
- 2 cups flour
- ¾ cup water
- ¾ teaspoon salt (optional)
Steps
- Mix all ingredients into a dough. Press onto greased cookie sheet to ½ inch thick.
- Bake in preheated oven at 400°F (205°C), 30 minutes. Do not cut yet.
- Remove from oven. Cut dough into 3-inch squares.
- Punch four rows of four holes per row into dough with a fork.
- Flip crackers. Return to oven, 30 minutes.
Notes from the original
- You can add 1 tablespoon shortening to the dough if desired. This will make the crackers more palatable but means that, unlike traditional hard bread, they will eventually spoil, even if properly stored.
- It is very important that hardtack has holes poked into it to ensure air escapes instead of turning the hardtack porous and therefore lessening its shelf life.
- Some recipes also recommend a second baking at 250°F (120°C) to thoroughly dry out the bread.
- Scale ingredient quantities equally if more dough is required.
- Adding salt to the dough brings multiple benefits, most notably improving taste and extending shelf life further.
Source. Adapted from “Cookbook:Hard Tack” by Wikibooks contributors, revision of 2025-06-08, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Changes. Steps rewritten into short commands. Introduction shortened. Wiki formatting removed. This adapted recipe is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Photo. Hartkeks offen.jpg (author listed on the file page), CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia. Resized; otherwise unchanged.