Just call us the Lefse Ladies. Yes, I learned the Norwegian art of rolling lefse. Lefse is a type of tortilla. There's potato lefse and flour lefse. I had asked Aunt Virginia to teach me about lefse. Shari opened up her kitchen and we rolled away. It's tricky, rolling such a small amount of dough into a large, round, flat circle. Aunt Virginia could roll about 3 or 4 in the time that it took me to roll one. I had a hard time using enough flour each time I flipped. I am excited to roll again so I can remember everything that I learned.
Aunt Virginia's Norwegian Flour Lefse
3 cups whole milk
2 cups water
3/4 cup lard or shortening
6 1/2 cups unbleached flour
1.Bring all ingredients except flour to a boil.
2. Pour into large bowl of flour.
3. Knead/mix thoroughly.
4. Form approx. 24 balls of dough.
5. Roll with lefse rolling pin and pastry cloth. Cook on lefse grill.
When done, wrap stack with moist towel. Cut lefse into 4 sections with knife or pizza roller. Divide into stacks of 10-15 and wrap well in Saran Wrap. Freeze. Pull out only portions to be eaten that day. Will keep well in freezer for several months.
Aunt Virginia kneading dough
Rolling
Me, attempting to roll
Aunt Virginia had to repair several of mine!
Kevin even gave it a try! Notice the small amount of dough. That has to be rolled out to near the edge of the pastry cloth. Pretty thin-my friends.
Oops, another tear. Not enough flour, again!
Finally, one that isn't ripping or tearing.
Cousin Emily, flipping the lefse on the grill! She is an expert.
9 comments:
Hmmm, very interesting. I wonder if you could use a griddle rather than a special pan. Gotta give credit to our female ancestors - such trouble they went to for feeding their families. Kudos to you, Jessica ... I love that you are giving your girls TRADITION!
Hugs - NanaZ
We work lots with Norwegians and have been to Norway a bunch of times, but lefse is new to us. Thanks!
XOX,
R&GZ
Having sampled some of your Norwegian culinary delights, Yummy! (butter & cinnamon)
Jessica, you are so adventurous! I would have just gone to the store and bought some lefse. But it is one of my favorite things to eat at Christmas time. My grandma made lefse and I can remember eating as much as I possibly could at the family holiday get-together. What do you put on your lefse? What a great tradition to learn and then pass down to you girls.
It's a good thing.
kudos to you, Jessica! I'm totally from MN and scandanavian and I don't even LIKE lefse let alone try to figure out how to make it! I'm impressed!
Our family makes potato lefse every Christmas. My son Myles does a lot of the rolling and my brother Jim expertly moves the rolled dough to the iron. This is an excellet family togetherness tradition. Keep it up and pass it on!
You can see some photos of the Waldemars in action in my Facebook album "Christmas Waldemar style" The scary black wig really added to the fun!
Just stumbled on to your blog. My maiden name is "Kjelshus" and every year we make lefse for the
holidays. We MUST be related??
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