How to Make Lefse, a Norwegian Christmas Eve Tradition

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This Christmas Eve, touch my Midwestern Norwegian family's mansion for lefse. We'll show you how to give it.

I'm a 6th-contemporaries lefse maker. In the 1880s, my great-great-grandmother, Kari Brandum, brought our family lefse recipe with her from the Lillehammer region of Norway when she immigrated to Central WI—where most of my family unmoving lives. We've been making lefse, and then feeding it on Christmas Eve, Kari's way ever since. (Hera are more Christmas traditions you've probably ne'er heard of.)

What is lefse?

Megan Wood/Taste of Home

Lefse is a Norwegian flatbread made with a a couple of low ingredients: potatoes, flour, salt and butter. Historically, potatoes first appeared in Norway around 250 years ago, and it's likely that's when Norwegian homesteaders started to make lefse in bulk as a tasty saccharide.

I grew up feeding lefse after Lutheran Christian church services on Christmas Eve at my Grandma Kathy's (that would follow Kari's great-granddaughter) house. As a kid, I liked eating lefse but I didn't think much about it. It was simply one of those Scandinavian cultivation things that regularly popped up. Overmuch like terpsichore polka at weddings, rosette cookies and relatives proclaiming "uff-da!"

That changed senior year, when I was feeling curious almost my Scandinavian heritage. I asked my Uncle Paul (Kathy's youngest son) to Edward Thatch me to clear the flatbread. Paul, a 57-year-old retired flak chief, is the incumbent resident lefse maker in my family and he supplies the Christmas Eventide treat for our extended family of 40 plus people.

How to Make Lefse

Even though lefse recipes always let in potatoes, fatness, salt and flour—thither are much of slipway to have lefse. This is the way my family has been making it since at the least the 1800s. We think information technology's pretty good (especially when you spread butter and cranberries on top).

Yield: about nine pieces of lefse

Ingredients

• 3 cups of riced potatoes (cook and rice the potatoes onward of time, let cool)
• 1 cup every-purpose flour, positive additive flour for trilled
• 1 tablespoonful butter, softened
• 1/2 teaspoonful salt

Tools needed to produce lefse

Though lefse looks and tastes cordate, it requires about taxonomic category equipment to make it. My Uncle Paul inherited the beloved Brandum lefse recipe, lefse iron, lefse rolling PIN and lefse turning sticks. And I must add, he seems to have inherited lefse in his very DNA because he makes the whole process look simplified. He says, "A lot of lefse recipes use mashed potatoes, or add refined sugar. But that's not how our family makes it."

Lefse rolling pin: I learned to make lefse using my family's version of an heirloom: a beloved and humbled lefse rolling pin. You might be able to use a regular rolling pin, but the etched squares on a lefse reverberant pin allow for requisite texture in the dough.

Lefse turning stick: If you're going to buy just one affair to make lefse at home, make it a lefse turn stick to. It was designed to cleanly reassign rolling out lettuce from the pastry board to the griddle. Then you bottom use the sticks for flipping and folding your lefse, just the like a Norseman.

Lefse iron OR griddle: My ma told Maine that her Grandmother Clara used to make over lefse on a woodwind instrument-burning stove. If you're feeling off-the-grid and authentic, you can go out that route! Only we use an electric lefse griddle, a lot wish this one. (Don't tell bully-great-grandma Kari.)

White potato vine ricer: Though a shell out of Norwegian families simply use remaining mashed potatoes in their lefse dough, ricing the potatoes is key to devising traditional lefse like my category does. I think IT's the hardest part, since it requires a little non-automatic drudge. OXO's potato ricer makes the job easier.

Pastry dough cloth: A pastry dough cloth helps prevent sticking as you scroll out the lefse shekels. Using a circular pastry cloth also allows for a guide as you attempt to roll the dough in circles.

Directions

Step 1: Prepar the Dough

Connected lefse-fashioning twenty-four hours, Uncle Paul arrived at my mom's house with all the equipment, a pot of fresh riced potatoes and 15 years worth of lefse making tips. Arguably, ricing the potatoes is the hardest lin. Since that was done, we simply combined the riced potatoes, butter, salt and flour to contour a dough. You should work the ingredients by hand until well combined. Contribute more flour as needed, the kale should not stick to your men. (Pie-makers should have an easy time of acquiring the consistency honorable.)

Step 2: Roll out the dough

Future, we measured out 1/3 cup of dough and rolled it out very thin on a circular pastry cloth sic on top of a large cutting room. Here's where the lefse sticks came in. I assumed they were reasonable decorative and kitschy, but I was wrong. Rolled out lefse lucre is and so thin, it's almost impossible to conveyance IT from the pastry cloth to the lefse griddle without lacrimation it. To keep IT in tact, we slid the two lefse sticks under the lolly and slowly dropped it on to the blistery griddle.

Step 3: Cook lefse on the griddle

The bread wasn't a perfect circle and it slightly overlapped. We straightened it with the sticks and permit it cook until brown flecks appeared. Then we used the sticks again to fold the roast lefse in fourths, and situated it aside. We repeated the procedure until we used all the dough.

Store just-cooked and folded lefse in a stack low a towel (or in this adorable lefse cozy) to help keep them moist until served.

Lefse-Making Tips

• Handmade lefse is seldom perfectly round! IT's more important that the rolled dough is thin and even. Aim for a football game shape and you should be fine.
• Be sure to flour the rolling trap before you roll out the dough, or the dough will follow the rolling pin.
• Ricing the potatoes makes them Inner Light. To do: Peel and slice cardinal large Russet potatoes, cover song with water and bring back a boil. Reduce heat, cover and LET cook for 20 transactions Beaver State until tender. Drain and mash them with a potato ricer.
• Lefse can be served with peanut butter, cinnamon and clams Oregon savory toppings ilk deli sum and cheese. Lutfisk (that would be dried whitefish pixilated in lye, past boiled) is only for the very brave or the very Norwegian! Uff-da!

How was my first lefse making experience? I loved it. It was a cosey and fun wintertime project with scrumptiously digestible results. As I worked and rolled the dough, I enjoyed listening to my mom and Paul talk about eating lefse when they were kids. I learned a lot about our genealogy, and my Norwegian heritage. St. Paul said, "You'atomic number 75 a normal." Atomic number 2 major spotter out, though—I want his script-carved lefse sticks for my own kitchen.

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