Lefse Making!

Lefse is a tradition in many scandinavian homes, especially the Melling home. The best way to make it, is to prepare the potatoes and refrigerate the night before cooking.  You also need a lefse grill, lefse stick and pastry board.  Most of you won't be buying this stuff but I had to document for family's sake!

Here is the basic cooking method, however Grandpa Duanne has his own way of making it and others may not entirely follow the exact recipe but it always seems to turn our wonderful! Just make sure to get all the lumps out!!! My first time making it here in Colorado, we didn't know what we were doing totally so we ended up with lumps and that made it harder to roll the dough and cook it.

We usually triple the recipe, so that there is plenty to go around at Thanksgiving and Christmas time. It stores well in the fridge or freezer.

5 large white potatoes

1/4 cup milk

1 tsp salt

3 tbsp butter or margarine, melted

1 1/2 cups flour
         -extra flour for rolling pin and pastry board

*makes about 18 pieces

Cook potatoes in boiling water until tender (they will fall apart when you stick a fork in them);drain.  Mash potatoes until smooth-this works best in a Kitchen-Aid mixer but whatever you have is great too. Beat in milk, salt and butter.  Refrigerate covered, several hours or overnight if possible.  Work in 1 1/2 cups flour to mashed potatoes; shape into a ball. Let stand 3 munutes. Knead lightly on floured surface until springy about 2 minutes.  On a heavily floured cloth covered surface (The Bethany Co. sells a great round board made just for lefse) using a rolling pin with a pastry sock on it, roll 1/4 cup dough into thin 10 inch circle. Lift lefse with lefse stick onto lefse grill, baking until golden brown spots appear. Flip over using lefse stick and cook the same way on other side. Continue until all dough is used. 

Now, there are different ways to serve lefse, but our family prefers butter and cinnamon & sugar.  So spread butter over whole piece of lefse and then sprinkle on the cinnamon mixture. We found that a pizza cutter works best to cut it, so cut into quarters and roll. Wah-lah! Some other options are to roll up deli ham in it, jam, plain butter (Grandma's favorite) nutella or anything else you can think of.  If you ever get a chance to make this, take advantage and learn a part of our culture!