How the heck long have I been doing this anyway? It doesn’t matter; the mad-kitchen scientist is back for another season of recipes to make your Buffalo Bills game days even more memorable.
For those of you new to this, it’s pretty simple. We love the Bills. We love food. Every week, you’ll get a themed recipe based on the Bills and their opponent.
Hardtack
So last week I deviated things a bit and the theme started with a nod to the mascot (then worked in the city). I had fun with that, and with the Las Vegas
Raiders game up I asked the question we all want the answer to this week.
What did pirates eat? Well kids, on long sea voyages you needed food that wouldn’t spoil, had high calorie density, and you could easily make and store.
Hardtack is exactly that. Used for long voyages and as a survival food, hardtack is made from flour, water, and sometimes a little salt. Not to be confused with a cracker or type of actual bread, hardtack is more like concrete that will keep you alive.
Intended to be dipped and softened before consuming, traditional hardtack is mostly flavorless. Not mine. You still NEED to dip it/dunk it, but it should enhance what you’re pairing it with not just absorb it.
Buffalo Hardtack
Makes: About a dozen biscuits
Active time: 20 min
Total time: About 3 hours
Ingredients
3 cups all-purpose flour, divided
1/3 cup hot sauce (see below)
2/3 cup water
1 tsp honey
1/4 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp garlic power
Essentials: Measuring cup and spoons, mixing bowl, rolling pin, baking sheets, pizza cutter, fork, a love of adventure and long journeys
Preheat oven to 250ºF
- Thoroughly combine 2 cups flour, hot sauce, water, honey, cumin, onion and garlic powder in mixing bowl. If the dough is still sticky, continue adding flour (about 2 tablespoons at a time) until no longer sticky (very slight tacky is OK); you might not need all three cups.
- Dust counter or other surface with flour; roll out dough to about 1/4-inch thickness.
- Segment dough into 3-inch by 3-inch squares using pizza cutter, if you want to be traditional (but smaller is fine too).
- Poke holes into dough with fork (see below); place dough segments onto baking sheet.
- Bake in preheated oven for about 3 hours, flipping every 30 min.
- Remove from oven and allow to cool; serve with some sort of liquid, such as soup.
Wingin’ It tips
Hardtack recipes typically call for thicker dough as it’s better for long-term storage. If you’re actually planning to do so, some recipes call for 1/2-inch thickness. The thinner version makes it a little easier to soften and eat. I even experimented with really thin to make crackers for adding into soup and the like.
How long will this keep if you want to store it? If you’re a purist and use just water, flour, and salt; apparently there is Civil War-era hardtack on display at a few museums still believed to be not be spoiled. I chose ingredients that should retain shelf stability in that they can be dehydrated well. For the hot sauce, avoid anything with pulp. The standard sauce for wings is Frank’s, and that’s an excellent choice for this. The seasoning is already powdered, and honey is also known for shelf stability.
That said, because I don’t want anyone to run with this and do something foolish, store this in an airtight container and I wouldn’t personally keep it around longer than a few weeks.
As for tips, I did add food coloring to mine to add a little flair. If you look closely you can see a little swirl of pink. Speaking of coloration, because of the hot sauce and food coloring, the top the “biscuits” or “slabs” as I think of them got real pale, real quick. The bottom stayed a salmon pink with a little browning toward the end. Research indicates this is pretty normal.
Here’s a picture gallery to give some idea of the process in case you’re a visual learner. And scope out the two I made with special shapes for the occasion.
For my final thoughts; I want to express exactly what the hardtack experience is using the bread continuum, as it’s technically a type of bread. Have you ever dipped a slice of bread into soup? You know how you have to dip real quick and take it out so it doesn’t disintegrate? Yeah, that’s not this.
You know with croutons in soup how you might put them in a few at a time so they don’t dissolve over time? That’s not this. Have you ever crumbled crackers into soup and they’re mushy kinda quick but hold together? Yeah, still not there. What about a whole cracker? Have you ever dropped one in and it gets floppy after a minute and falls apart? Yeah, that’s not hardtack.
No. With this stuff (and remember mine is half the thickness most recipes call for); I put a “biscuit” into an entire bowl of soup right at the beginning. It was the last thing I ate. I could break it with my spoon. It was not floppy. It did not crumble. I still had to chew carefully. That said. It was delicious. Just more like flavorful concrete than a true bread.
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