Lefse: A photo essay

For the unaware among us, lefse is a Norwegian potato pancake or flatbread. In areas that aren't so heavily Scandinavian, it's not common. (I once did a little happy-dance when a coworker found some at the New Pioneer Co-op in Iowa City.) We had to go to Decorah to get the supplies to make it (griddle, stick, rolling pin).

Here in Minnesota, it's ubiquitous. In my area, we have it at every church dinner, you can buy it in most of the grocery stores, and the supplies are available in pretty much any local hardware store. Which is awesome.

When I was visiting my parents after Christmas, I got to help my dad make his last batch of lefse for this year.

When I was in sixth or seventh grade, we went to my great-grandmother's house and had her make a batch so we could record her process (audio only; no video, unfortunately). As you can imagine, that tape has been a treasure for our family since Grandma Hovey died.

So my dad had a good teacher, and has become a master lefse-maker in his own right. He rolls it so thin that you can almost see through it, and it's delicious. But it's quite a process....


Here we go, with the official apron in place. He had already cooked and riced the potatoes the day before and mixed them with a few other ingredients to make the dough. It works better when you refrigerate the dough overnight.




Mixing a section of dough with flour.




It then gets rolled into these balls. People like my great-grandma just grab a hunk of dough and call it a day, but my dad, always one for precision, carefully measures so that each one is just a hair over a third of a cup. There is a genetic reason for some of my own slight OCD-like tendencies. Just sayin'.




Each ball of dough gets rolled out with the special grooved rolling pin.




The resulting round of lefse is transferred with the special lefse stick to the special lefse griddle. It gets crazy hot, necessitating protection of the tabletop with the specially engineered triple-cardboard forcefield. Can you tell how "special" this all is? You turn the stick in your hand to unroll the folded lefse.




One round cooking while another gets rolled.




The special lefse stick in action, carrying a finished piece to...




...the damp dishtowels that keep the cooling lefse soft. One towel underneath and one on top, which we kept spraying throughout the process to keep them damp.




And voila. The magic of lefse, ready for butter and brown sugar. It's delightful, and it's a fun family tradition.