Tuesday, October 12, 2010

What we learned about Lefse

Sorry about the poor quality photo!

While at the Norwegian Folk Museum, we were able to see a demonstration of lefse making (and, of course, enjoy some fresh lefse ourselves). This was made the old fashioned way, on a large, flat griddle placed directly over the fire. We learned that there are several types of lefse, not just the potato lefse that we Scandinavian Americans eat at Christmastime. This woman was making "mørlefse"  which is soft and sweet. It is made from eggs, flour, sugar, melted butter, buttermilk, and baking powder. You do roll it out flat, but not nearly as thin as the potato lefse we are more familiar with. She told us that this would be made for special occasions, like weddings or holidays, because it has sugar and butter in it, which were traditionally more expensive. The potato lefse would have been less expensive to make, because it doesn't have sugar in it. There is also a lefse that is used wrapped around a sausage, like a flat version of a hotdog bun! We have seen this for sale at the grocery stores. I would imagine this type doesn't have the sugar added either.

Another interesting tip she gave me was to use barley flour when rolling out the dough. Apparently the barley flour doesn't get incorporated into the lefse dough as easily, so it keeps it from sticking. I think this is something like using cornmeal to roll out pizza crust. As soon as I figure out the Norwegian word for barley flour, I'm going to try this out!

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