Hard Tack fresh from the oven...

Hard Tack fresh from the oven…

Well, late this after­noon, after try­ing to con­cen­trate on read­ing my US Army Sur­vival Man­u­al I just could­n’t focus.  So I decid­ed to try my hand at Hard Tack.   For those of you who do not know, Hard Tack is a rock hard bread made of water, flour, and a lit­tle salt.  After being baked, it is as hard as a brick.  It is great for camp­ing and is a good sur­vival food because it stays well, and is eas­i­ly portable.

Hard Tack was extreme­ly sim­ple to make.  I found a cou­ple of recipes below that I thought might be good for those of you that want to give it a try.

Eat­ing Hard Tack, as I found out the hard way is NOT to bite down on it…  You can lit­er­al­ly chip or break a tooth.  It is meant to be ground up and you can reuse it to cook, make pan­cakes, etc…  You can dip/crumble it in soup, tea, or cof­fee as a hearty snack or meal.  Recon­sti­tute it with water to make it pli­able for cook­ing.

Let it air dry for about 24 hours after cook­ing.  Do not store it in a plas­tic con­tain­er or plas­tic bag, how­ev­er, because any mois­ture that is still in the bread will mold and ruin your bread.  It is best stored in a paper bag or out in the open air so that any addi­tion­al mois­ture can evap­o­rate from it.  Left in a plas­tic bag or out in the open, your Hard Tack should last for months.

I found sev­er­al recipes for Hard Tack that you can try your­self:

Enjoy!

Next Hard Tack attempt… I will try mak­ing it next to or over a fire with my mess kit.  That should be inter­est­ing…