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Not knowing many cowboys, we turned to our trusty sidekick, the Yahoo! search box. We typed in "hard tack" and waited to see what turned up. The category matches were not very helpful so we clicked over to the web page matches and hit the trail, looking for some hard facts. We learned that hard tack was a type of biscuit perforated with holes. It had a long shelf life and was used by many soldiers, sailors, miners, and, yes, cowboys as a replacement for bread, which went moldy very quickly. The only problem was hard tack was extremely (you guessed it) hard. In order to eat it, "you had to bust it up with your rifle butt or a handy rock; put it in your mouth and leave it there until it became soft(er)." We
stumbled across an amusing song titled "Hard Tack Come Again No More," which refers to hard tack as "dried mummies of hard crackers." The song also describes it as being old and wormy and the cause of sore stomachs. Despite its unappealing description, we found a suprising number of recipes available on the Web. Many recipes and tips are traded on message boards devoted to military history and re-enactment. So it seems safe to assume that people really do eat it. As for how it is made, well that depends on if you want to use an authentic Army recipe or a more modern
one calling for an electric mixer, but the main ingredients are simply flour and water. It seems that the key to hard tack is the baking and drying process, which accounts for the long shelf-life. If you're not much of a baker or don't have the time, you can also buy hard tack online. Just make sure to have the number of your dentist handy before taking a bite.
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