I mentioned in a post down below that hardtack can be difficult to find these days. One or two readers wrote in to ask if that meant the US military was still serving hardtack to the troops. The answer is no. Virtually all the hardtack that’s made in the US today is sold to Civil […]
READ ONWorld, witness the way Americans prefer to consume cheese. I’m not sayin’ it’s right, I’m not sayin’ it’s wrong, it’s just the way we do it (and that’s before our main meal, not after). Crackers are a low-effort bit of savory bakery with a high payoff. (“Excellent crackers!” Thank you, you know I make them […]
READ ONI can’t think of docking without flashing back to a job I once had, where I watched an intern (from the Culinary Institute of America, no less) make the very same mistake twice a week, every week, for months. He’d roll out the dough for the bakery’s cream crackers into a single giant sheet, one […]
READ ONIt’s baker-speak for “poking holes”, reader Kendra. Those holes let expanding gas and steam escape while the crackers bake in the oven. And that’s important for flatbreads and crackers, because otherwise they wouldn’t stay flat. They’d puff up into brittle little pillows, and zis, she is no good. Better that a cracker be flat, solid […]
READ ONSo then, imagine you’re a military rations purveyor to the US government circa 1865. The Civil War just ended and your hardtack business has tanked. You’ve got dozens of hard-earned dollars invested in your state-of-the-art baking equipment and need to find a way to re-purpose it for peacetime use. Could crackers be mass-marketed to ordinary […]
READ ONThis phrase has been a mainstay of popular American culture for well over 100 years. Exactly where it came from nobody knows, however it’s been traced as far back as this satyrical ad published in The Knickerbocker in 1849: For sale, a Poll Parrot, cheap. He says a remarkable variety of words and phrases, cries […]
READ ON…came into being not long after the American Civil War ended. Given their reputation among soldiers and veterans, it might seem impossible that a thing as loathed as the cracker could ever become a successful commercial product. However one can never underestimate the power of good marketing. Sure, the war may have ended, but there […]
READ ONOver the weekend, I realized I haven’t done a particularly good job of explaining how hardtack was made. Based on the posts below, I wouldn’t blame you for thinking that early crackers were nothing but hunks of flour paste, slow-baked to maximum dryness. The truth is that there was often a bit — if only […]
READ ONThat question from some half a dozen readers over the weekend, and it’s a good one, since matzoh and crackers can be very similar in their taste, texture and appearance. The Joe Pastry call on this is that while they may appear the same to the casual observer, they are quite different things. Matzoh is […]
READ ONEver wonder what Civil War-era soldiers sang about ’round the camp fire? I’ll give you a hint: Let us close our game of poker Take our tin cups in our hand, While we gather ’round the cook’s tent door, Where dry mummies of hard crackers Are given to each man; O hard crackers, come again […]
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