Photo: Lance Fisher · CC BY-SA 2.0
Lefse (Thin Potato Flatbread)
Norway's paper-thin potato flatbread. There is one rule and it decides everything: the flour goes in only after the potato is completely cold. Worked into warm potato, whose starch is still holding its water, it takes about twice as much flour to come together — and that flour is what makes lefse tough. Potato riced and left overnight, with the least flour you can manage, rolls out thin enough to read newsprint through.
Ingredients
- Dough (eight 30cm rounds)
- floury potatoes · russets or similar1 kg
- butter · melted60 g
- double cream60 ml
- sugar1 tbsp
- salt1 tsp
- plain flour · the less the better, and it goes in the next day160 g
- flour for rolling4 tbsp
- To serve
- butter · soft40 g
- sugar and cinnamon · mixed2 tbsp
- Equipment
- a potato ricer · or push it through a fine sieve1
- a grooved pin and a flat wooden stick · or an ordinary pin and a thin turner1 set
Steps
- ⏲ 40 min
Boil the potatoes in their skins, peel them hot and put them through a ricer. Mashing or beating releases the starch and turns them gluey — the same reason as on mashed potatoes.
- ⏲ 120 min
Stir in the melted butter, cream, sugar and salt, spread it thin in a wide dish and let it go completely cold, uncovered. Overnight in the fridge is the standard. This step is the recipe.
- ⏲ 10 min
Work the flour into the cold potato a little at a time, only until it just holds. If 160g does it, stop there. Divide into eight and chill again.
- ⏲ 10 min
Heat a griddle or heavy pan to about 230°C with no fat in it at all. Lefse cooks on a dry plate.
- ⏲ 15 min
On a floured cloth, roll one piece out thin enough to read newsprint through. There is almost no gluten here, so the target is thinness, not force.
- ⏲ 1 min
Slide the flat wooden stick under the sheet and carry it to the griddle draped over the stick. You cannot lift it by hand — at this thickness it tears under its own weight.
- ⏲ 1 min 40 sec
About a minute on the first side. Turn it when brown spots appear and the dusting flour just scorches, then about 40 seconds more.
- ⏲ 10 min
Stack the cooked sheets between damp cloths. Straight off the griddle they are dry enough to crack; a few minutes between the cloths and they are foldable bread again.
- ⏲ 5 min
Spread with soft butter, scatter sugar and cinnamon over, roll up and serve.
Tips & Variations
Variations
- Regional versions differ a lot: Valdres lefse is the thinnest, Hardanger's is much thicker and softer, and some districts make it with no potato at all.
- Møsbrømlefse: the Nordland version, spread with a sauce of brown whey cheese (brunost) and folded. It ends up a different food from the sweet one above.
- The American Midwest: it survives as a Christmas food in the Norwegian-American communities of Minnesota and North Dakota, which is also where most of the photographic record comes from.
- Wrapped round fish: in Norway lefse is also used to wrap fermented or smoked fish, in which case the sugar is left out.
- With fårikål and krumkake: three Norwegian dishes about three different things — not stirring, shaping inside ten seconds, and letting the potato go cold.
Tips
- The flour goes in after the potato is completely cold. This is the recipe. Hot potato starch is still holding its water, so flour cannot take that water up and you need roughly twice as much to make the dough cohere — and every extra gram makes it tougher. Left overnight, 160g does it.
- Gnocchi works at the opposite temperature. That page peels and mashes the potato while it is hot and mixes straight away. Same two ingredients, boiled potato and flour, and the flour goes in hot in one and cold in the other — because the aims differ: gnocchi has to hold together in boiling water, lefse has to roll out like paper.
- Rice it, do not mash it. A ricer separates whole potato cells without shearing them, which is the mechanism mashed potatoes sets out: shear the cells and amylose leaks out and tangles. That gluiness is the enemy here too.
- With no gluten you cannot force it. By the standards of choosing flour this dough has almost no protein available to build a network. So the grooved pin presses it out rather than stretching it, and the finished sheet is carried draped over a wooden stick — lift it by hand and it tears under its own weight.
- No fat on the griddle. A dry plate is correct; oil fries it and gives you blotches. The other bread on this site cooked on a dry plate is chapati.
- The damp cloth is the last step. Straight off the griddle the sheets are dry enough to crack. Stacked under a damp cloth they turn foldable within minutes. Lavash does the same thing months later; this does it in five minutes.
- One at a time. Rolling, carrying, griddling and covering is a single cycle, so you cannot run two in parallel. Which is why in Norway it is made by several people in one long session.
The basics behind this dish
- Dough and Gluten: When to Build It and When to Avoid ItThe same flour and water becomes a dumpling wrapper or a tender pancake. The difference is whether you built gluten or avoided it — and kneading and resting do different jobs.
- Serving Temperature: Why Some Dishes Wait and Some CannotWhy cold dishes need heavier seasoning, why rice and rice cake go stale fastest in the fridge of all places, and the dishes where letting the steam off is the point.
- Heat Control: Preheating, Oil, and Reading the PanThe same ingredients become a different dish depending on pan temperature. When to add the oil, how to read heat by sound, and which dishes want low heat instead.
More of the same kind
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