Northern Exposure

In Alaska, America’s 49th state, they are an institution.

Alaskan mothers teethe babies on them. Alaskan explorers and wilderness guides and hunters and swaggering menfolk bound for fishing camps “swear by things”, stuffing them into their pockets and pouches.

Smeared with salmon or seal oil, they’re a daily staple for indigenous native people in some of the coldest and harshest conditions on earth.

They’re hardtack crackers – Sailor Boy Pilot Bread brand, to be specific.

And they come out of Henrico.

Henrico-based Interbake Foods – at 2821 Emerywood Parkway – is perhaps best known for its Girl Scout cookies, produced through its ABC Bakers Division.

But in Alaska, the company is famed for its Sailor Boy Pilot Bread.

Sailor Boy falls under the broad category of hardtack, a simple, hard-baked, dry cracker known for its long shelf life and its ability to survive rough handling.

For centuries, hardtack was a staple of sailors on long sea voyages, soldiers on military campaigns and wilderness adventurers, explorers and hunters.

Roman soldiers were known to have carried a form of the cracker, and the daily food allowance aboard a British Royal Navy ship once was a pound of biscuits (that’s cracker in British) and a gallon of beer.

In many ways, they are the same dry, long-lasting crackers today. Interbake says the ingredients for Sailor Boy Pilot Bread are traditional: enriched flour and water, vegetable shortening, leavening and salt.

These days, outdoorsmen and explorers are more likely to carry jerky or protein bars. But hardtack remains a staple in Alaska. In fact, Pilot Bread is one of the most state-specific food products in the nation: 95 percent of the crackers are sold in Alaska, Interbake officials say.

They’re part of the culture. A few years ago, when a rumor circulated that Interbake was going to stop making the iconic crackers, the Anchorage newspaper ran a front-page story reassuring a troubled public that the famed cracker would still be available.

The humble Sailor Boy cracker box with its beaming eponymous sailor boy has become an iconic symbol for many Alaskans, binding generation to generation, region to region.

Over the years, Sailor Boy has earned a reputation as the Alaskan equivalent of soul food.

“It’s a staple. People have such fond memories of Pilot Bread,” says Kelly Hurd, director of development for the Cook Inlet Tribal Council in Anchorage.

“It has a cult following, especially in rural communities. The cracker is about 5 inches in diameter

“It’s very hardy cracker that holds up. When I go out in the wilderness, it always comes with me. But we’ve also got Pilot Bread in our break room [at the Tribal Council headquarters,]” Hurd says.

Hurd helps organize the Native Youth Olympics, an annual event that attracts more than 2,000 youth from all parts of Alaska.

They come together to participate in traditional natives games based on hunting, fishing and working together – all skills necessary to survive the harsh environment in Alaska.

So a few years ago when Hurd was thinking of ways to celebrate the rich tradition of rural Alaskans, Sailor Boy Pilot Bread Crackers bubbled to the top of her mind.

Hurd thought of holding the first Sailor Boy Pilot Bread Crackers recipe contest in conjunction with the games.
The first recipe contest was held in 2011, at the Native Youth Olympics in Anchorage.

Each year students from 50 communities across Alaska participate in the games at the Native Youth Olympics and the Junior Native Youth Olympics

“People are extremely creative in finding uses for Pilot Bread,” she says. “It was a way to tap into people’s passion for Pilot.”

She approached Interbake, and the company agreed to help with both money and products. For example, the winner of the recipe contest won a year’s supply of crackers.

The recipes, hundreds of them, touched on everything from desserts to seafood and meat.

Sue Hoeldt, a longtime devotee of Sailor Boy Pilot Bread Crackers, came in first with her recipe for “Pilot Bread Moose Burgers.”

The recipe includes 2 pounds of ground moose, 2 eggs beaten, 1 package of onion soup mixed with a ¼-quarter cup of water and 6-8 Pilot Bread Crackers ground finely.

After the ingredients sit for an hour, you form the mix into hamburger patties for grilling. When done, place them between two Sailor Boy Pilot Bread Crackers, and savor the memories.

Hoeldt is the manager of five community health clinics based in Aniak, Alaska, which can be reached by flying 400 miles west of Anchorage. The typical temperature range for Aniak during the year is -55 to 87.

Flying is one of the few ways you can reach the villages where the health clinics are based, Hoeldt says, because there are no roads.

Although there is food to be had on the hoof or in the sea, Hoeldt says grocery items also have to be flown into the villages, which is one of the reasons that Sailor Boy Pilot Bread Crackers have remained popular.

“They hold up well in travel,” Hoeldt says, and have a sturdiness that can survive the bumps of air travel, or for that matter dog sled or snowmobile or canoe travel.

A mother and her child attending the 2012 Native Youth Olympics in Anchorage pose with a box of Sailor Boy crackers.

Hoeldt says she’s even heard of people using the Pilot Bread box to make gaskets if their snowmobile breaks down.

“The taste is something you have to get used to,” she says.

“Taste” is a word that’s hard to attach to something like the crackers. They have little taste or notable flavor, though devotees like their crunch. Hoeldt says most Alaskans use them like other Americans might use bread.

Every year, during August or September, Hoeldt gathers about 30 rural youngsters from the area she serves and takes them on a raft ride as part of developing their leadership skills.

She says her Pilot Bread moose burgers are one of their favorite meals. All of the youngsters have grown up eating the crackers, she says.

Karen Larsen, a graphic artist living in Anchorage, pushed Sailor Boy Pilot Bread Crackers into a new cultural dimension when she created a huge version of the Sailor Boy box, 4 feet by 16 feet, a few years ago.

It was as part of a commission she received to create something to honor the Pop Art movement.

“It was a hoot!” Larsen says of her creation.

She put the plyboard box next to a popular ice-skating lagoon, and the skaters went wild, posing with the box for pictures, cuddling it, sitting on it.

The mammoth cracker box was eventually moved to a tribal headquarters, where it attracted a similar response.

You can’t buy the crackers – now made in Front Royal – locally. But Interbake says that they can be purchased through Span Alaska Sales, which ships directly to the consumer.

The Website for the company is http://www.spanalaskasales.com.

The crackers are sold in a 2-pound box, which holds about 38 crackers, or biscuits as many Alaskans call them.

“It’s something you find whenever you go into someone’s house,” says Sue Hoeldt. “It’s coffee and tea and Pilot Bread with butter.” ■