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rebeccmeisterAt some point after I met scrottie, he showed me his potato ricer and the special rolling pin he has for making lefse, that Norwegian specialty food. I'd heard a bit about lefse from another friend of mine with Norwegian heritage, but really didn't know much more than all that. Fast forward, and just about every year there's a period of eager anticipation for the arrival of a special package from his mother and sister, containing lefse.
Describing lefse is tricky.
It's like a large flatbread, made primarily from potatoes, with some butter and cream in the mix as well. But you might note that potatoes are full of starch, and starch isn't the sort of substance to provide much structural stability for thin, flat foods. So there is also some flour in the dough. It's tempting to equate lefse with the millions of other thin, flat foods that people make all across the globe (tortillas! crepes! chapati! naan! pita!). But when it's properly made, the texture and flavor of lefse are distinct.
Along with waving around his lefse-making equipment and feeding me lefse sent to him by his family, S has expressed a longstanding interest in learning to make lefse himself. To facilitate the interest, a couple years ago I gave him the gift of a lefse griddle, pastry board, and turning stick, all from Lefse Time (in case you ever have a hankering for various Scandinavian wares). The gift came with a booklet on how to make lefse, plus a package of a potato flake mix for making Instant Lefse. S did go ahead and used the mix to make some Instant Lefse, but there was a lot of muttering as he did so, and he eventually declared that he would need to get lefse-making lessons from his sister in order to proceed.
Anyway, at some point during conversations with my mom and siblings, it became apparent that my immediate family, for all its Danish Scandinavian heritage, knows nothing of lefse. Well! This is a situation that must be rectified. With S all the way out in California, far from the lefse-making equipment, I could hardly expect him to help out. Therefore, to the griddle!
I actually carried out the project in two stages. For the first stage, I made a smaller test batch to share with friends in Albany. I have a teammate who grew up in Norway and who has previously shared lefse with me that she had gotten during a fit of homesickness. I figured she would be a great test audience, and if the batch turned out well she'd be particularly appreciative.
Before I got underway, I consulted this Scandinavian Cook Book that S's mom gave to me, for recipes:
Hilariously, it contains no fewer than SEVEN different lefse recipes!
This tells you several things: every Norwegian grandmother who makes lefse has her own recipe for how to make it, and she is Very Strongly Opinionated about how it's made.
However, these recipes all share a problem, which is that the making of lefse is almost entirely about the techniques involved, and none of these recipes includes nearly enough information about the technique to be useful!
So ultimately, I started out with the photo booklet of instructions that came along with the lefse griddle from Lefse Time, because it was the most thorough and straightforward. The creators of the Lefse Time website and business are clearly serious about helping Scandinavian cooks figure out how to proceed. Learn the basics first, riff later.
When I went to get started, I was able to find the griddle, S's rolling pin, the pastry board, and the turning stick, but the potato ricer was nowhere to be found.
Consulting the internet, I learned that one can also use a food mill, which I have, and I even knew exactly where it was.
You want to cook and then rice some Russet potatoes for lefse, because you want potatoes with high starch content and you want to be absolutely certain there aren't any lumps in your batter.
Freshly riced potatoes are beautifully fluffy.
In the midst of ricing, some butter gets added to the potatoes to melt in and integrate, and then the potatoes need to cool completely before the next steps. Once they're cool, the remaining ingredients get added (in my case, flour, cream, and a pinch of salt), then the dough is mixed and kneaded and shaped into patties. Then it's time to turn on the griddle and start rolling out the lefse.
These photos aren't actually in chronological order, because I was pretty busy during the rolling when making the first batch. But I had more bandwidth by the time I worked on the second batch, and Martha was being cute with her spectating, so here we are:
I had a lot of beginner's luck with the first batch, aside from botching several of the transfers of the dough onto the griddle. I made more of the classic lefse-making mistakes with the second batch, which is why I can now tell you that one of the worst lefse-making mistakes is having your lefse dough stick to the pastry cloth. The Lefse Time booklet was helpful because it told me to scrape the dough off with a butter knife, and then re-flour the board generously, and that got me back on track. I also gave up on trying to interweave the rolling of the next lefse with the cooking and flipping of the prior lefse, because that meant the next lefse sat on the pastry board, which might have given it extra time to try and stick.
Later on, I also watched an internet video of a proper Midwestern Norwegian person making lefse, and learned that I should have gone even further with my chilling of the lefse patties, which probably also would have helped. Next time!
The lefse turning stick is a crucial and integral part of the process. The thin, rolled-out lefse is so fragile that you must pick it up by sliding the tapered end of the lefse stick underneath it.
Then you carry the lefse, draped across the turning stick, over to your piping-hot griddle (500 degrees F), set part of it onto the griddle, and twirl the stick to unroll the rest of the dough across the griddle so it's flat.
If you screw up, you're better off just leaving the piece of lefse in place, as above, because if you try and move it as it starts to cook, that will just make matters worse. But in any case, at least you can drown your sorrows in carbohydrates, because it's better to just eat your mistakes rather than let them out of your kitchen. Ahem.
I also eventually learned that if your lefse dough has too much flour in it, it becomes tough instead of being like a fluffy, tender little dream cloud. This is another reason to be sure to thoroughly cool your potatoes; you won't need to add as much flour to your pastry board. I'm definitely going to experiment more with this aspect next time. For my first efforts it seemed better to not get too concerned over the amount of flour used.
George would like you to know that he also provided moral support during the lefse-making. Either that, or he was interested in the long, tapered stick that kept waving around.
Now, like crepes, you cook the first side of the lefse for longer, then flip and cook the second side for less time. Flipping also makes use of the turning stick.
I can now also tell you that the lefse tastes best if you let it cool completely, then reheat it, add some butter and sugar, and enjoy.
To my relief, my Norwegian friend was very appreciative of the first test batch, and S has now finally received his lefse in the mail, so I can finally tell you about it all. I thinkslydevil, sytharin, annikusrex and my mother were all just bemused by the whole lefse obsession, but they certainly found it perfectly edible, at least.
I think this will be a holiday tradition worth repeating.
scrottie, he showed me his potato ricer and the special rolling pin he has for making lefse, that Norwegian specialty food. I'd heard a bit about lefse from another friend of mine with Norwegian heritage, but really didn't know much more than all that. Fast forward, and just about every year there's a period of eager anticipation for the arrival of a special package from his mother and sister, containing lefse.Describing lefse is tricky.
It's like a large flatbread, made primarily from potatoes, with some butter and cream in the mix as well. But you might note that potatoes are full of starch, and starch isn't the sort of substance to provide much structural stability for thin, flat foods. So there is also some flour in the dough. It's tempting to equate lefse with the millions of other thin, flat foods that people make all across the globe (tortillas! crepes! chapati! naan! pita!). But when it's properly made, the texture and flavor of lefse are distinct.
Along with waving around his lefse-making equipment and feeding me lefse sent to him by his family, S has expressed a longstanding interest in learning to make lefse himself. To facilitate the interest, a couple years ago I gave him the gift of a lefse griddle, pastry board, and turning stick, all from Lefse Time (in case you ever have a hankering for various Scandinavian wares). The gift came with a booklet on how to make lefse, plus a package of a potato flake mix for making Instant Lefse. S did go ahead and used the mix to make some Instant Lefse, but there was a lot of muttering as he did so, and he eventually declared that he would need to get lefse-making lessons from his sister in order to proceed.
Anyway, at some point during conversations with my mom and siblings, it became apparent that my immediate family, for all its Danish Scandinavian heritage, knows nothing of lefse. Well! This is a situation that must be rectified. With S all the way out in California, far from the lefse-making equipment, I could hardly expect him to help out. Therefore, to the griddle!
I actually carried out the project in two stages. For the first stage, I made a smaller test batch to share with friends in Albany. I have a teammate who grew up in Norway and who has previously shared lefse with me that she had gotten during a fit of homesickness. I figured she would be a great test audience, and if the batch turned out well she'd be particularly appreciative.
Before I got underway, I consulted this Scandinavian Cook Book that S's mom gave to me, for recipes:
Hilariously, it contains no fewer than SEVEN different lefse recipes!
This tells you several things: every Norwegian grandmother who makes lefse has her own recipe for how to make it, and she is Very Strongly Opinionated about how it's made.
However, these recipes all share a problem, which is that the making of lefse is almost entirely about the techniques involved, and none of these recipes includes nearly enough information about the technique to be useful!
So ultimately, I started out with the photo booklet of instructions that came along with the lefse griddle from Lefse Time, because it was the most thorough and straightforward. The creators of the Lefse Time website and business are clearly serious about helping Scandinavian cooks figure out how to proceed. Learn the basics first, riff later.
When I went to get started, I was able to find the griddle, S's rolling pin, the pastry board, and the turning stick, but the potato ricer was nowhere to be found.
Consulting the internet, I learned that one can also use a food mill, which I have, and I even knew exactly where it was.
You want to cook and then rice some Russet potatoes for lefse, because you want potatoes with high starch content and you want to be absolutely certain there aren't any lumps in your batter.
Freshly riced potatoes are beautifully fluffy.
In the midst of ricing, some butter gets added to the potatoes to melt in and integrate, and then the potatoes need to cool completely before the next steps. Once they're cool, the remaining ingredients get added (in my case, flour, cream, and a pinch of salt), then the dough is mixed and kneaded and shaped into patties. Then it's time to turn on the griddle and start rolling out the lefse.
These photos aren't actually in chronological order, because I was pretty busy during the rolling when making the first batch. But I had more bandwidth by the time I worked on the second batch, and Martha was being cute with her spectating, so here we are:
I had a lot of beginner's luck with the first batch, aside from botching several of the transfers of the dough onto the griddle. I made more of the classic lefse-making mistakes with the second batch, which is why I can now tell you that one of the worst lefse-making mistakes is having your lefse dough stick to the pastry cloth. The Lefse Time booklet was helpful because it told me to scrape the dough off with a butter knife, and then re-flour the board generously, and that got me back on track. I also gave up on trying to interweave the rolling of the next lefse with the cooking and flipping of the prior lefse, because that meant the next lefse sat on the pastry board, which might have given it extra time to try and stick.
Later on, I also watched an internet video of a proper Midwestern Norwegian person making lefse, and learned that I should have gone even further with my chilling of the lefse patties, which probably also would have helped. Next time!
The lefse turning stick is a crucial and integral part of the process. The thin, rolled-out lefse is so fragile that you must pick it up by sliding the tapered end of the lefse stick underneath it.
Then you carry the lefse, draped across the turning stick, over to your piping-hot griddle (500 degrees F), set part of it onto the griddle, and twirl the stick to unroll the rest of the dough across the griddle so it's flat.
If you screw up, you're better off just leaving the piece of lefse in place, as above, because if you try and move it as it starts to cook, that will just make matters worse. But in any case, at least you can drown your sorrows in carbohydrates, because it's better to just eat your mistakes rather than let them out of your kitchen. Ahem.
I also eventually learned that if your lefse dough has too much flour in it, it becomes tough instead of being like a fluffy, tender little dream cloud. This is another reason to be sure to thoroughly cool your potatoes; you won't need to add as much flour to your pastry board. I'm definitely going to experiment more with this aspect next time. For my first efforts it seemed better to not get too concerned over the amount of flour used.
George would like you to know that he also provided moral support during the lefse-making. Either that, or he was interested in the long, tapered stick that kept waving around.
Now, like crepes, you cook the first side of the lefse for longer, then flip and cook the second side for less time. Flipping also makes use of the turning stick.
I can now also tell you that the lefse tastes best if you let it cool completely, then reheat it, add some butter and sugar, and enjoy.
To my relief, my Norwegian friend was very appreciative of the first test batch, and S has now finally received his lefse in the mail, so I can finally tell you about it all. I think
slydevil, sytharin, annikusrex and my mother were all just bemused by the whole lefse obsession, but they certainly found it perfectly edible, at least.I think this will be a holiday tradition worth repeating.
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Date: 2025-12-28 04:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-12-28 04:11 pm (UTC)