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 kept dry. Also known as a sea biscuit, sea bread, or ship's biscuits.
Ingredients
- 2 cups flour
- ¾ cup water
- ¾ teaspoon salt (optional)
Ingredients for 2 servings (430 g) · the original recipe
Method
- 1
Mix all the ingredients into a dough and press onto a greased cookie sheet to a thickness of ½ inch.
- 2
Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (205°C) for half an hour. Don't cut now.
Oven - 3
Remove from oven, and cut dough into 3-inch squares. Punch four rows of holes, four holes per row into the dough (a fork works nicely).
Oven - 4
Flip the crackers and return to the oven for another half hour.
Oven
Recipe from Wikibooks Cookbook, written by Wikibooks contributors. Used under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence; the ingredient list and method on this page are taken from that page and edited (its notes, tips and variations are not reproduced), and are available under the same licence. The macros, equipment tags and scaling are Ma Kitchen’s own and are not the source’s figures. Ma Kitchen is not affiliated with or endorsed by Wikibooks Cookbook. Copied on 2026-11-12.
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