a hard tack to gnaw

Laura Ingalls Wilder mentions hardtack only once in the original eight "Little House" books. In By the Shores of Silver Lake (Chapter 2, "Growing Up"), Laura washes and irons [clothes] and bakes hardtack for Pa to take with him when he goes to work for the railroad in Dakota.

In the introduction to On the Way Home, Rose Wilder Lane writes that her mother made two dozen hardtacks for the journey from Dakota to Missouri in 1894. "They were large as a plate, flat and hard. Being so hard and dry, they would not spoil as bread would. It was a hard tack to gnaw, but it tasted almost like a cracker." Since hardtack doesn't appear in Laura's manuscript for SSL, one wonders if it was added by Rose. In neither book do read of anyone actually eating it.

Although Laura is said to have made hardtacks "as big as a plate," the traditional size was about three inches square, like a saltine cracker. There are even tin cutters for cutting hardtack, complete with hole-making protrusions. Do you know why there are holes? They're called docking holes and are there to keep pockets of air from forming during baking.

A recipe for hardtack is found in Barbara Walker's The Little House Cookbook (1979), but it couldn't be easier to make and no recipe is really needed. Hardtack is a mixture of flour and water in about a 6:1 ratio, mixed and kneaded until it becomes leathery. The dough is then rolled about a quarter inch thick and cut into pieces. After piercing with a knife point or nail, the pieces are baked in a fairly hot oven until hard and dry and crisp. Once cool, they can be kept for months (in museums, there are pieces of hardtack that date from the Civil War). Walker's recipe calls for salt, which is an often-debated ingredient. Salt attracts moisture, the enemy of baked goods. In the hardtack pictured above, no salt was used. They were baked at 350 degrees for over two hours. The top piece was made with plain unbleached flour and water. The bottom piece was made with flour ground from wheat seeds ("berries") using a flour mill.

Hardtack was a staple in the diet of Civil War soldiers because it was portable and could be eaten when fresh foods weren't available. The G.H. Bent Company in Massachusetts provided hardtack to the Union Army and sells it commercially today.

As Rose suggested, hardtack didn't have to be cooked again; it could simply be "gnawed" plain. However, it was commonly dipped in coffee (or perhaps tea, in Charles Ingalls' case) to soften it, then eaten. Or it could be soaked in water, then fried in the drippings from salt pork.
- posted by pioneergirl at 8:50 PM