At the moment I'm finishing the excellent "Jack Tar" by L&R Adkins so inspired by that and since I thought I had a big bag of stone ground wholemeal flour that was near or just passed its use by date yesterday I decided I'd make a batch of hardtack/ships biscuits to use it up.
Being a funny sort of day, the lads having gone back to school that morning after having them underfoot all summer I did a bit of interweb paddling and found a excellent article on hardtack.
http://colonialbaker.net/A Summary of Reproducing the 18th Century English Sea Biscuit.pdf
This lead me to waste a couple of hours on turning a biscuit press (from a lump of lime I think, it is from my scrap wood basket) and fitting it with 12 piano wire pins. Once the food grade linseed had dried I actually went in search of the flour. There was of course no sign of it, I must have binned it in a bout of H&S paranoia. What I did find was a unopened bag of wholemeal spelt that was a few months past it's use by. It seamed fine, no rancid smell from the oils in the wholemeal going off or signs on infestation.
Well, the Romans used a form of hardtack, bucellatum. There's no surviving recipe and all the made up reenactor ones added salt and fats to them, which are both detrimental to the longevity of the stuff and would add to the costs but would make them more attractive to modern man, or any man. Any road I decided to make it without either. It required a bit more water than the recipe in the link and I left it more than half an hour to stand to give the chaff or whatever it's called more chance to absorb the water incase it needed more adding. As it happens a large PEK meat tin make the right sized ( 3 3/4" dia) biscuit cutter so I carefully opened and emptied one of those, washed it well and made some holes in the other end to let air in. I'll make a proper period cutter when I've done a bit of research, for show and tell. Previously I made a square cutter that had the pins as part of the design, it's a pig to use as the dough does not easily drop out so I've gone back to two processes, cut out then ***** the holes. You could just as easily just poke the holes in with a chop stick or whatever but I wanted something to use as a prop as well as to, lord help me, eat.
Anyroad I ended up with 9 half inch thick biscuits which I baked in a preheated oven at gas Mark 5 (375f), with the shelves in the top two slot, for a hour. I pulled them out and turned them around a couple of times and each time I saw a appreciable amount of water vapor escape from the oven. After I'd switched off the oven I transferred them from the baking trays to a wire tray and stuck that back in the now fairly cool oven and left them overnight.
i'd read in other sources about biscuits being baked twice or in cases where they would be stored for a long time up to 4 times. So today I put the oven back on for another hour ( but not preheating it) while I got the sprogs up for school. Again I opened the door a couple of times to let any water out ( saw none ) and left the biscuits in the cooling oven while I went off and did a bit of shopping. Yep, I bought a couple of bags of Tescos stoneground wholemeal and will be doing 3 or 4 pounds of the stuff later.
i've transferred the spelt stuff to a drawstring cotton bag and after a week hanging in a dry place I think they will be as dry/stale as they will get and I'll put them into something airtight. What I should have done is weigh the dry flour so I could tell when all the water I added was gone. Since there will have been some wastage I'd aim for a lower weight than I started. If I recall right back in the day they expected 100lb of flour to make about 92 lb of finished biscuit.
in the past I've only made small batches of this stuff, mainly to see how it lasts but if I do a decent amount I'll actually practice using it as a portable form of flour. I'll save the fat from the next lot of bacon I cook and try frying biscuit in that and crumbling it in stews or pounding it for suet puddings.
I think its Shiptons who make a stone ground whole meal heritage wheat flour that when I can get some ( I detest paying postage on foodstuffs) should make the most authentic " age of sail " hardtack without having it ground special. Saying that I have been daft enough to grow patches of ancient grain in the past so maybe I will do that!
Herself has ordered me a copy of "Feeding Nelsons Navy" so I may get some more daft ideas from that!
ATB
Tom
Being a funny sort of day, the lads having gone back to school that morning after having them underfoot all summer I did a bit of interweb paddling and found a excellent article on hardtack.
http://colonialbaker.net/A Summary of Reproducing the 18th Century English Sea Biscuit.pdf
This lead me to waste a couple of hours on turning a biscuit press (from a lump of lime I think, it is from my scrap wood basket) and fitting it with 12 piano wire pins. Once the food grade linseed had dried I actually went in search of the flour. There was of course no sign of it, I must have binned it in a bout of H&S paranoia. What I did find was a unopened bag of wholemeal spelt that was a few months past it's use by. It seamed fine, no rancid smell from the oils in the wholemeal going off or signs on infestation.
Well, the Romans used a form of hardtack, bucellatum. There's no surviving recipe and all the made up reenactor ones added salt and fats to them, which are both detrimental to the longevity of the stuff and would add to the costs but would make them more attractive to modern man, or any man. Any road I decided to make it without either. It required a bit more water than the recipe in the link and I left it more than half an hour to stand to give the chaff or whatever it's called more chance to absorb the water incase it needed more adding. As it happens a large PEK meat tin make the right sized ( 3 3/4" dia) biscuit cutter so I carefully opened and emptied one of those, washed it well and made some holes in the other end to let air in. I'll make a proper period cutter when I've done a bit of research, for show and tell. Previously I made a square cutter that had the pins as part of the design, it's a pig to use as the dough does not easily drop out so I've gone back to two processes, cut out then ***** the holes. You could just as easily just poke the holes in with a chop stick or whatever but I wanted something to use as a prop as well as to, lord help me, eat.
Anyroad I ended up with 9 half inch thick biscuits which I baked in a preheated oven at gas Mark 5 (375f), with the shelves in the top two slot, for a hour. I pulled them out and turned them around a couple of times and each time I saw a appreciable amount of water vapor escape from the oven. After I'd switched off the oven I transferred them from the baking trays to a wire tray and stuck that back in the now fairly cool oven and left them overnight.
i'd read in other sources about biscuits being baked twice or in cases where they would be stored for a long time up to 4 times. So today I put the oven back on for another hour ( but not preheating it) while I got the sprogs up for school. Again I opened the door a couple of times to let any water out ( saw none ) and left the biscuits in the cooling oven while I went off and did a bit of shopping. Yep, I bought a couple of bags of Tescos stoneground wholemeal and will be doing 3 or 4 pounds of the stuff later.
i've transferred the spelt stuff to a drawstring cotton bag and after a week hanging in a dry place I think they will be as dry/stale as they will get and I'll put them into something airtight. What I should have done is weigh the dry flour so I could tell when all the water I added was gone. Since there will have been some wastage I'd aim for a lower weight than I started. If I recall right back in the day they expected 100lb of flour to make about 92 lb of finished biscuit.
in the past I've only made small batches of this stuff, mainly to see how it lasts but if I do a decent amount I'll actually practice using it as a portable form of flour. I'll save the fat from the next lot of bacon I cook and try frying biscuit in that and crumbling it in stews or pounding it for suet puddings.
I think its Shiptons who make a stone ground whole meal heritage wheat flour that when I can get some ( I detest paying postage on foodstuffs) should make the most authentic " age of sail " hardtack without having it ground special. Saying that I have been daft enough to grow patches of ancient grain in the past so maybe I will do that!
Herself has ordered me a copy of "Feeding Nelsons Navy" so I may get some more daft ideas from that!
ATB
Tom
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