Pilot bread is often stocked in Alaska, but for people outside of Alaska there really isn’t a place to get it other than Span Elite – Alaska’s Premier Online Grocer – Span Elite. They do ship to the rest of the US if you are interested in pilot bread. Pilot bread is a shelf stable “hardtack” but does not have the extreme hardness of historical hardtack. Its something like a saltine cracker, without the salt. I like this for camping and its wise to have something on hand for power outages or getting snowed in.

We were stuck in our home about a decade ago from snow, and I got some pilot bread after that snow to be better prepared for such events. The power went out for a few days and we couldn’t cook very well, despite having a wood burning stove. We haven’t had this extensive of a snow in since then, but I have dipped into the stash over the years for camping trips since I am actually quite fond of these crackers.

Checking in on our stash I realized these are a decade old at this point. I tried some and found they are still good, a tiny bit stale, but no surprise give how old they are. We re packaged them at the time in vacuum seal bags and that seems to have preserved them well. We may try some of those freshness packets (the ‘do not eat’ things you find in jerky and such) in packaging this time to extend them better, but they seemed to do well just vacuum sealed.

These aren’t super expensive ($100ish for 24lb), but I think they are worth the little extra money given how durable they are. If you have ever wondered if pilot bread is a good thing to have on hand for emergencies, I would recommend them. They are about 100ish calories per cracker and if you like saltines, you will like these.