The Chef Within

Last week, the youth in our church went on a pioneer trek.  We essentially reinacted some of the historic events associated with travel across the plains.  The clothing, transportation and food were prepared to  period (or as close as we could get).  In doing the research for appropriate foods for the time and travel I discovered something called hard tack.  Hard tack (or called sea biscuits by sailors) was basically flour and water baked into a thick cracker.  It was used routinely by the military and settlers because it was lightweight, tasty (one could argue that point), versatile and had an amazing shelf life.  I discovered two things in this excercise.

One…I learned that the basic flour and water recipe actually evolved and developed variations with the expertise of good cooks.  Instead of using just flour and water, cooks of the time started adding oats and multiple grains, some fat (usually in the form of lard or bacon fat), salt and buttermilk (the available by-product when making butter).  As you can imagine, the end result was infinitely better tasting and still met the other criteria for travel.

Secondly….as I made multiple batches of this “hard tack” I would vary the recipe according to the things that I had read.  One recipe said the dough should be baked with a thickness of 1/2 inch, others said 1/4 inch (kind of like a graham cracker, pictured above) and yet another said the thinner, the better. 

So I tried baking the dough rolled out at a 1/4 inch and also wafer thin (pictured directly above).  The 1/2 inch thickness sounded like a “toothduller” which was exactly what they were nicknamed when they became especially old and stale. 

When the dough was rolled out very thin (or pressed out with my fingers) the end result was very much like a wheat thin.  They were delicious!  I couldn’t stop eating them and literally had to take them out to the garage and get them out of sight.  So now I’m blogging about it in case you might ever want to make snacking crackers.  I’m going to post the recipe on the radio website, for those interested.

All the dry ingredients are mixed in a large bowl.  The shortening is added and crumbled with your fingers, then buttermilk is added and mixed until the mixture gathers into a ball.  At this point you have a couple of options.

1) If you want a thicker cracker you can divide the dough in half.  If you have a kitchen scale this would be a good use for it. 

Roll the dough onto a lightly floured counter to roughly the size of baking sheet. 

Transfer to greased baking sheets and work with your hands to get the dough to all corners. 

Pressing with the heel of your hand helps push the dough into corners.

Dough should be very level and even throughout.

Sprinkle with salt…

Score and bake as explained on the radio website…

Bake halfway and then cut through the lines created by scoring.

Flip each square to continue baking the second side.

2) If you want a thinner wafer then divide the dough into thirds and do the same thing.  It is a little harder to work with since there is less dough to move around.  But it can be done.  Bake according to directions.  When cool, break into shards and store in airtight container.  Not only are these great for personal snacking, I think they would make awesome gifts!