#43: Make Hardtack

Working at a military history museum, I am always looking for new activities to do with visitors, and new ways to teach history to school kids. One of my favourite educational tactics is to engage multiple senses. Many history museums only ask people to use the senses of sight, hearing, and occasionally touch – they can see artefacts, hear audio tours or oral histories, and sometimes handle artefacts or replicas.

For some reason I always try and find ways to incorporate the remaining 2 senses into the museums I’ve worked at. It’s like my personal mission or something. I want visitors to be able to smell and taste things that will help them understand the history being presented, because, well, it’s fun, it's kind of weird, and it's somewhat unexpected. Once, I even wrote a half-assed proposal for a ‘Museum of Smell’ – where the exhibits are entirely olfactory. Wouldn’t that be cool?! (...ooorrrr maybe it’s just me...)  

I admit, an idea partially inspired by Willy Wonka

For the most part, all I can really do is tell people what things smelled and tasted like – for example, I tell school kids that an 1812 battlefield would have smelled kind of like fireworks, and the meat you’d be eating as a soldier would be boiled, grisly, grey, and mostly tasteless. My hope is that by describing things with multiple senses, the daily lives of the soldiers will become more real for visitors learning about them.

Then one day, I happened upon a recipe for "Civil War Hardtack"  on Pinterest, and I really wanted to use this in our programming. I’d love to have samples of hardtack in the museum for people to nibble on, as they learn about life as a British soldier during the War of 1812 – although they would have called it ‘biscuit’ as opposed to ‘hardtack,’ it’s essentially the same food – flour, water, salt, and a teeny bit of oil.

It pained me to add no sugar. Sigh. For science! 

But first things first – I had to try to make a batch on my own, to see how hard it is to make, and if the resulting food is poison or not.

I also tried a few different 'historical' shapes for kicks 

As we happened to have a staff meeting this week, I thought it was a good time to finally try out the recipe. It's really very easy to make, and hey it's pretty hard to tell if you do screw it up somehow. Hardtack is supposed to be rock hard and tasteless, and it certainly turned out so. It tasted kind of like an oat cake, or melbatoast, only saltier. And bitten the wrong way, this stuff could probably chip a tooth.  

Resulting hardtack/biscuit. Good for the jaw! 

Yeaahh. It was gross. But, no one who ate it was violently sick so I’d say this recipe is fit for museum consumption. 

How to Make Hardtack/1812 Biscuit

*half recipe. 'Cause you really, really don't need that much hardtack. 

Ingredients: 

1 cup whole wheat flour 

1/3-1/2 cup water 

3 pinches table salt 

1/2 tbsp vegetable oil 

Heat oven to 375 F. Mix flour and salt together, then add the oil and enough of the water to make soft dough that is not super sticky. 

Use a rolling pin to roll the dough into a large rectangular shape. Cut dough into smaller rectangles using a butter knife, or use a round glass to cut out small circles, about 6-8cm in diameter. Use a fork to press a few lines of indents into the dough. I'm pretty sure that part is mostly for looks, but who knows. 

Lay the rectangles/circles on a cookie sheet, and bake for 30 minutes. Flip the biscuits, and bake on the other side for another 15-20 minutes, until they look brown. The idea is just to get all of the moisture out, so you can toss them in a barrel and carry it across the Atlantic before they go bad.

Not recommended for the weak toothed, or daily consumption.