Ship’s Biscuits, also known in the modern world as “hardtack,” needs no introduction. If you ask Google what sailors and pirates in the 17th and 18th Century ate, hardtack will usually be towards the top of the list. From the image of sailors eating them in the dark as to not see the weevils while sailors breaking their teeth on them, hardtack is familiar to anybody interested in naval life. What we are here to answer is this: does it taste good and does it have a place in your kitchen?

This recipe, just like the previous article on The Flip, comes from Lobscouse and Spotted Dog by Anne Chotzinoff and Lisa Grossman Thomas

What is Ship’s Biscuit

Ship’s Biscuit is nothing more than unleavened bread that has been baked several times in order to remove as much moisture as possible. This allows it to be stored for an extremely long time (Townsends tried a piece that he had tucked away from a decade ago!) without spoiling or becoming inedible. During the Age of Sail, one of the many obstacles that merchants, Navies, privateers, and pirates had to combat was making sure their sailors had enough to eat. Crewing anything from a sloop to a Ship of the Line was hard, strenuous work, and the men (and women if you were on a particularly tolerant pirate crew) needed to be fed as efficiently as possible.

The issue with taking fresh bread on a ship is that even when adequately stored, it will not last more than a few weeks onboard a ship. It will mold and cease to be edible. Ship’s Biscuit addresses that problem. Many sailors became so accustomed to ship’s biscuits that they distrusted regular bread and refused to eat it! Not only is it essentially a naval substitute for bread, but it can be used as an ingredient in naval dishes as well!

The Recipe

The recipe for this Ship’s Biscuit comes from Lobscouse and Spotted Dog by Anne Chotzinoff and Lisa Grossman Thomas. This book is a companion cookbook to Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin book series. The series follows Royal Navy Captain Jack Aubrey and his Irish Surgeon and British intelligence agent Stephen Maturin as they navigate the Napoleonic Wars. A fantastic movie based off of several of these books was released in 2003 as Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. The recipe is pictured below:

This recipe ended up being enough to make four 4.5ounce or 127.57 gram biscuits. Each day the average sailor got 1 pound of biscuits so we are within the ballpark of that number! If you have access to a vacuum sealer, it is possible to store these indefinitely if that is something you are interested in doing so!

While any flour will do, we recommend using unbleached, whole wheat flour for the most historically accurate version of this recipe. Unfortunately for us, our local grocery store was out of whole wheat flour so we got regular all-purpose flour that is unbleached. Otherwise, all you will need is a bowl, clean counterspace, a whisk, and a rolling pin!

Preparation

Start by combining the flour and the salt. Use any size of whisk to them mix them together. Feel free to adjust the volume of your ingredients and bowl to however many biscuits you are planning to make.

Next, add the water.

Using a wooden spoon, spatula, or your hands to combine the ingredients into a dough. This is where flour and water can be added depending on how it comes together. If the dough is super sticky, add ore flour. If the dough is super dry and not wanting to come together, add more water.

Take the dough out onto a lightly floured workspace and begin to knead it. DO not worry about overworking the dough, it is virtually impossible to ruin it at this point! Our preferred method is to lightly throw the dough on the counter, then putt it up over itself and repeat for 30 minutes. After kneading, begin t roll it out, either making it round or square depending on what shapes you are looking to make.

Now we start to treat the dough like puff pastry or pie dough. Fold the dough over itself and then roll it out flat. Do this several times until the dough is very smooth and elastic.

Once you are done folding and rolling, weigh it on a kitchen scale and then split it into 4 (or more, of you’ve scaled up the recipe) even pieces.

We opted to roll the dough out one more time and then use the second most obnoxious cutting implement (my kilij sword is coated in in non-edible oil) to evenly divide the dough.

No matter what shape your dough takes, it would always be possible to separate it into an even number of pieces. If the pieces aren’t exactly even it is okay! The final shapes are up to you! So long as the biscuits are generally into even pieces you have succeded.

If you are making Ship’s Biscuits from the 17th and 18th Centuries, form the divided dough into rounds that are about 1/4 inch or 6.35 millimeters thick. Then, poke holes across the biscuit with a stray, chopstick, or an 18th Century fork. These serve to help the biscuit to not puff up while baking.

If your goal is to make hardtack from the 19th century (Don’t ever say I never did anything for you Blood and Steel players out there!), form the divided dough into squares, and then using a modern fork, poke holes across the squares.

If you have any leftover dough that won’t make a full biscuit after trimming and shaping, you can braid it for a light snack after baking or try and make another quarter or half biscuit. Lay everything on a parchment paper lined baking sheet and bake at 350 for 1 hour or an hour and 30 minutes.

While you wait for you Ship’s Biscuit to bake, I recommend leisure time. Cracking open a good book by Benerson Little, reading about your favorite ship type, or actually reading through the rulebook for Blood and Plunder are all acceptable activities. Smoking some Black Frigate pipe tobacco with a glass of grog is optional, but encouraged.

After baking, place the biscuits on a cooling rack and lower your oven’s temperature to 175 degrees Fahrenheit or 80 degrees Celsius. Once the oven reaches the set temperature, blade the biscuits (rack and all) back into the oven to bake for an additional 4-8 hours. The goal here is to bake all the moisture out of them, otherwise they will eventually mold in storage.

After the second bake, they can be stored via vacuum seal or in a large, zip-lock bag. AN optional third baking at the same lower temperature for another 4-8 hours may be needed if you like in a humid climate.

How Does it Taste, and What Can I Use it For?

Ship’s Biscuit by itself is pretty bland, and can prove to be difficult to eat by itself. Its on inedible, but needs some help by being soaked in coffee, tea, or broth. When I was in college, I would bake up some biscuits and crush them with a hammer to add to my instant noodles to make them a bit more filling. If you are making a soup and need something to thicken it with, crushing up a biscuit and then adding it to the soup will make pseudo dumplings. In many period recipes, that is exactly what is done with them.

We hope you enjoyed this recipe! Next time, we’ll be using these biscuits to make a sailor’s favorite stew: Lobscouse!

Sources:

• Lobscouse and Spotted Dog by by Anne Chotzinoff and Lisa Grossman
• Townsends First Video on Ship’s Biscuit
• Townsends Second Video on Ship’s Biscuit
• Tasting History’s Video on Hardtack and Grog
• 1863 American Civil War Hardtack by Steve1989MREinfo