Midwestern Potato Lefse (Norwegian-American Potato Flatbread)

The primary time I attempted to make lefse, I give up midway by. 

I believed the American model of the Norwegian flatbread can be a straightforward dessert for a Midwest-themed ceremonial dinner. It is comprised of components I virtually all the time have readily available—potatoes, flour, butter, and cream. It is good with almost any filling, candy or savory, together with butter (essentially the most conventional selection), Nutella, jam, and cheese. And it retains for days, so you do not have to make it à la minute, like a crepe.

However for these of us who did not develop up in Norwegian-American households within the higher Midwest, the dough is notoriously arduous to deal with. That afternoon, I discovered simply how irritating it may be.

Hours earlier than the ceremonial dinner, as I scraped on the floury mashed-potato mess sticking to my rolling pin, I spotted I needed to give it up. Irritated, and with sauerkraut balls to form, I hurled the dough into the trash, like that would train it a lesson. We had cake for dessert. Sometime, I believed, I might get again to it.

For my second strive, I knew I wanted assist. So, I referred to as Marika Josephson, the co-founder of Scratch Brewing Firm in Ava, Illinois. Marika is not simply an professional in coaxing the flavors of foraged hickory leaves and black cherry bark into a number of the nation’s most unusual beers. She’s additionally actually into lefse.

As you may guess from her final identify, Marika has Norwegian roots. She additionally has household within the Higher Midwest. “I grew up consuming lefse across the holidays,” she instructed me. “Each Christmas, we would get a care bundle from my great-aunts in North Dakota.” Her great-aunt Gladys labored in a lefse manufacturing unit in Hatton.

As an grownup, Marika began making lefse along with her daughter, which obtained her interested by the historical past behind her household recipe—inspiring years of analysis. Since then, she’s printed educational articles concerning the dish, began work on two lefse-related e-book initiatives, and rolled out numerous rounds of dough.

In Norway, lefse can imply many alternative issues, Marika instructed me. It is a part of a protracted custom of hearty flatbreads, comprised of wheat, oats, and rye. However in America, 9 out of ten lefse bakers make the model that some Norwegians name potetkaker, or “potato truffles.”

There isn’t any easy clarification for the overwhelming choice for the potato selection within the States. Marika has a idea that includes the topic of one in all her upcoming books—an influential immigrant baker named Anna Kindlem, who lived in Minnesota from the Nineteen Twenties till her demise within the Nineteen Seventies. “She made 1000’s and 1000’s of rounds of lefse yearly, together with for a number of the greatest and most essential Norwegian-American occasions in the USA,” Marika says. And as Kindlem acknowledged in letters to a newspaper in Norway, her lefse was of the potetkaker selection. She did not deliver potato-based lefse to the USA, however as Marika wrote in a profile of the baker, she virtually actually helped popularize it.

All that apart, possibly it is sufficient to level out that generations of immigrants to the USA and their descendants have sanded the tough edges off Previous Nation traditions, for one motive or one other—assume red-sauce Italian, or strip-mall Mexican. It is no actual shock that the most typical number of lefse within the Midwest at this time is a smooth, candy, and crowd-pleasing one.

That’s, should you make it proper. Marika shared a handful of ideas, which I examined by weeks of trials. That is what labored for me:

• For the best starch construction, begin with russet potatoes, then chill after cooking. Starchy potatoes like russets are comparatively excessive in amylose, which types a gel throughout cooking that then corporations because it cools. That firmer gel community offers lefse dough the energy it must roll skinny. Waxy and pink potatoes comprise extra amylopectin, so that they make a creamier however weaker dough that tears extra simply. Many recipes name for boiling potatoes entire, to guard the starch inside. With russets, you do not have to fret about it: “They’re so forgiving, it virtually does not matter what you do to them,” Marika says.
• Go simple on the flour within the dough… Flour provides gluten, which toughens lefse. Use an excessive amount of, and your flatbread can be chewy and dry. Scuffling with a smooth dough isn’t any enjoyable, however it’s the worth you pay for mashed-potato-tender rounds.
• …however do not be shy about utilizing it whilst you’re rolling. Not like most bread recipes, which ask you to withstand including further flour to a moist dough, the lefse course of requires common flouring, regardless of how skilled you might be. The precedence is to roll the dough out as thinly and evenly as attainable, and you are going to want some assist with that. If the dough sticks to the rolling pin or tears, you might not be capable of restore it (although you will nonetheless get pleasure from consuming it). Flour preemptively to stop sticky spots.
• Roll your lefse out on material, and contemplate wrapping your rolling pin in material, too. In case you’re actually severe about lefse, Marika says, you must put money into a Bethany pastry board—and, whilst you’re at it, the corporate’s lefse “grill” and lefse stick. They’re normal in Norwegian-American households throughout the Midwest, making the method a lot simpler. You possibly can additionally put money into a corrugated lefse rolling pin to assist stop sticking.
• In case you simply need a style of the custom, as I did, this is learn how to get by with out specialised tools: Lay a skinny, tightly woven kitchen towel on the counter. Safe the sides with tape or a couple of heavy objects—something that’ll maintain the material from sliding as you roll. If you wish to be further cautious, wrap your rolling pin in one other material. (Roll it across the pin and tuck the ends between the handles and the barrel.) Mud each cloths flippantly with flour and rub it in together with your arms. The flour works into the weave, making a kind of nonstick floor. “It makes a fairly large distinction,” Marika says.
• While you switch your lefse from the counter to the skillet, deal with it prefer it might collapse in your arms at any time, as a result of it’d.
• Roll every spherical as skinny as you probably can. In case your rolling material has phrases or footage on it, it will be a useful visible help: Preserve rolling till you possibly can learn the phrases or clearly see the images by the dough. Raise the dough steadily and flip it sometimes to stop sticking.
• Prepare dinner every lefse instantly. As soon as rolled, the lefse dough begins to soak up floor moisture once more. “Any further seconds on the floor and it’ll begin to stick,” Marika says. It might probably really feel a bit hectic at first, however you will get right into a rhythm: roll, cook dinner, roll, cook dinner, roll, cook dinner. Every lefse solely takes a few minutes to cook dinner, which is concerning the time you want to roll out one other spherical.

After I began engaged on this recipe, I anticipated to give you a Critical Eats-style hack that will make lefse simple. And whereas I picked up a couple of methods that make it simpler, what I actually discovered by testing is that an important ingredient is persistence. Even after weeks of apply and recipe fine-tuning, I am nonetheless coping with sticking, tearing, and the opposite points that stress out all however essentially the most skilled lefse cooks—particularly these of us and not using a devoted pastry board or griddle. My lefse nonetheless aren’t completely spherical, which is annoying however not unusual. (Marika says hers normally aren’t, both.) However they do style nice, whether or not served with butter and a sprinkling of white sugar, as many Midwesterners desire, or used as a wrap for chilly cuts or sizzling canine.

Making lefse give you the results you want takes time and dedication. There isn’t any getting round that. For households throughout the Higher Midwest, it’s a part of the custom.