Lefse Tutorial

This weekend I tried to commit Suicide-By-Baking! I had to call on my friends Deedee and Rick Rack to get me un-STUCK from my driveway so I could get to Aldi's and buy ingredients in BULK! I had another "I AM CRAZY" moment when I piled them all up in my living room and just HAD to take a picture of it! I slept that afternoon and got up and began baking around 0000. I baked FORTY as in 4-0 DOZEN kringlas! It only took about 14 hours and my feet were KILLING me by the time I finished! Then I loaded up the car with half of my kitchen including but NOT limited to: my trusty stockpot, my HUGE steel bowl, my lefse spoon, my lefse griddle and stick, my footed rolling board, my pastry cloth and sock, my potato ricer, all those FLIPPING kringlas, and everything you see here! It must have taken 82 trips out to the car!

Now, to start lefse, you need to peel, cook, and drain 10 pounds of potatoes. I had boiled a batch that morning and had them sitting in the car next to me on the ride home. I had set the pot out in the front seat while I showered so they'd cool a little faster (they HAVE to be cool before you start to mix them) and honest to god, I'd STIR them every now and then while I was driving home so they'd keep cooling! My childhood babysitter and surrogate Grandmother Daisy had ordered 6 dozen kringlas and I delivered them to her on my way home and I mentioned this to her and she just LAUGHED. She also said that she had a potato ricer that she would loan me in case I wanted to RICE them during the remainder of my drive! I got a real kick out of that!
Now the RICING! If you have carpal tunnel, you probably should recruit someone to do this FOR you! Or if you are a man and you plan on having kids, you probably shouldn't do this either because I swear I could feel veins standing out in my NECK as I did this! This is the fussiest part! But you rice them TWICE so they are SMOOO-T (smooth in Iowegian). The second ricing is my favorite because it is SO much easier! My hands hurt more than they do after a day of Temari stitching or spinning!

Next you add your liquids which consists of cream, butter and some salt (only the FINEST ingredients! ;) Note my AWESOME lefse spoon! I got that at Gold Rush Days in Rochester! It is my tallest and most sturdy spoon and I just love that it is an antique! It is perfect for mixing BIG batches of stiff dough because you can brace it against your forearm and get some fulcrum action going! After you mix in all that lovely fatty goodness, you have the most DELICIOUS mashed potatoes you've ever tasted. It's also about this time that my mother will come and dish out a bowl for herself to EAT! The big wooden spoon also comes in handy to BEAT interlopers like mothers to get them away from the bowl!

Next you add your flour. Lefse is a VERY Norwegian food and it is made differently all over the country depending on the region. One of the fun things Mom and I did was to go through ALL of her cookbooks. You know how EVERY church/community/Ladies' Circle has their own cookbook. Mom dug out at least a dozen and most of them belonged to my late Grandmother. Some recipes call for yeast, some call for whole wheat flour, some are crispy, etc. We had fun looking through all those old cookbooks. My mother truly has a goldmine on her kitchen counter. Almost an oral history of Norwegian cooking (but it can't be oral because it's printed!) But for the most part, I think most midwestern Norwegians are familiar with the generic lefse we make. My mother made a good point, "Lefse should taste like POTATOES, not like flour," and I concur. So the flour part is not always absolute. There has to be enough where you can roll it out, but not so much that flour is all you taste. The mixture should resemble a VERY STIFF mashed potatoes and just be the slightest bit sticky. I swear you use more flour rolling it out than you do in the actual mixture.
A 10 pound potato batch will make 60-72ish pieces of lefse, depending on how how big you want them to be. We made 12-14" pieces. They are rolled PAPER thin. Note all the flour all over the counter. I can't stress enough to be liberal with the flour as you roll them or you will have a MESS. Your pastry board and rolling pin sock should be impeccably clean too. Any little dough booger on your pin sock will tear holes in your

lefse. It is handy to keep a butter knife next to your work area to scrape off any 'acquired' boogers. I always like to use stainless steel scoops to portion out the dough (especially if I'm cooking for the Public so that the pieces are uniform).

Roll your piece of dough up onto your pin to transfer it to the griddle. Your griddle should be 500 degrees. I have a Bethany griddle, made right here in Cresco, IA. Mine is teflon coated and I just LOVE it! I remember as a little girl standing on a chair in front of the stove and flipping over Mother's flat stovetop griddle. This electric one is SO slick!
Here is my mother demonstrating her "Swish and Flick" technique! She is using the traditional lefse stick. This stick is also a Bethany brand stick and it has a lovely blunt end so you don't tear your lefse. Bethany grills and accessories can be purchased in the Decorah and Rochester Walmarts--or I suppose anywhere there is a large Scandinavian population (or online of course).

We got some weather while we were baking! We had my mother's 20 cup electric coffee maker (ANY self respecting Lutheran woman has one of these for when she hosts a luncheon!) full of cider and mulling spices and we sipped on it all day to fortify ourselves! What a lovely thing to do during a snow shower! We stayed nice and warm huddled around the lefse grill! :)
And FINALLY.....we had labored to produce.....a stack of lefse! We made 3-60ish pieces of lefse batches and piled them 20 to a stack (any more than that and they get too heavy and SQUISH and you'll never get them separated) and kept them covered in towels until they were cooled. Then we separated them and folded them up into quarters and packaged them 6 per bag. We had a really good response from the community and my dad was SO GOOD and DELIVERED them to people! I felt like I had been a good Norwegian girl! It was a lot of work and I was falling asleep in my chair at 2200 but I was glad I had done it! I had a lot of people ask if we'd do it again in the spring! We even got a MAIL ORDER! A woman in Williamsburg, IA called and wanted us to send her 4 dozen kringlas! We sent them Priority Mail and I talked to her on the phone and assured her that they'd get there OK because I had mailed kringlas to Iraq in AUGUST and they'd gotten there OK.

I guess I had forgotten how fussy lefse is. I still had 10 dozen or so kringlas left and I know many people will make their own kringlas, but not too many people make their own lefse. I am so thankful I grew up surrounded by so many proud Norwegians and I was lucky enough to learn about our traditions and I am proud to carry them on. When I first started making lefse, my Grandpa Maynerd gave me his hobnail lefse rolling pin. It was carved out of a branch from a tree that grew on the Family Farm. I nearly cried when he gave it to me. I miss him dearly. His brother is in Colorado and Mother and I sent him a box full of kringlas and lefse! :) That was our good deed for the whole MONTH!
Merry Christmas everyone! I know it is still early, but I am just feeling so Christmassy! I love all the preparations! Christmas seems to be the time when all our family traditions come out. We should try to make family traditions all the year through. We can be thankful and remember the reason for the season all year. We must remember and thank Him all year. Christmas is a nice reminder though. So now you know everything you'd ever wanted to know about lefse, so go and BAKE SOME!

Oh, and as an added note...our Dear neighbor Bill came and had lunch with us. He is in his ninety's and is a Good Norwegian. We put some fresh and hot off the griddle lefse in front of him to eat. It was SO GOOD to visit with him. His wife was Swedish and we talked about Lutefisk and traditions. Bill used to come down to our basement during Christmas dressed in his Santa costume and we have pictures and fond memories of him. And Mother talked about the varieties of lefse in Norway. My Grandpa Maynerd and his wife Grandma Joann had family backgrounds totally different because of the area in which their parents grew up in Norway. It was so awesome to hear about how their families arrived in the United States (Mom talks about how when my Grandma's family arrived in Canada and traveled south, it was during the Fall and they saw pumpkins growing on the vine and they thought they were oranges! Because remember how 100 years ago the talk of America was so wonderful--the streets are paved with gold and there are pigs running thru the streets with forks stuck in their backs calling "Eat me! Eat me!" Just ask Lillebjorn Nielsen!) And eating Lutefisk is an event in and of itself! Mother said how my grandpa ate his lutefisk on a plate with the potatoes and you'd just roll up your lefse and use it to push your fish onto your fork, but the ROGALAND area of Norway (where Grandma was from) would lay the lefse on a plate, pile your potatoes and fish onto it and then roll it up and eat it.....and how Grandpa thought Grandma was just a BARBARIAN because she ate it that way! My OTHER favorite story about them is that Grandpa and his sister Thelma and brother Stewart could all speak Norwegian but my Grandma Joann could NOT. Grandpa's parents would always say that "Joann can't be very smart because she can't speak Norwegian". Can you IMAGINE?! My grandpa started school not being able to speak English. And he didn't ever SPEAK Norwegian when I knew him, but he could always understand me when I'd speak it to him. :) I know he is proud of me. And I know he watches over me. :) Jeg elsker deg Morfar! Og jeg savner deg!

Glede Jul!