Author: Gary Legwold

Tomorrow I make gobs (a lefse term) of lefse dough that will allow me to make heaps of lefse rounds on Friday. I will gently place these perfect rounds in plastic bags that will be picked up Friday by customers (in blizzard conditions, as it turns out) who often feel the pressure of either showing up for the Christmas gathering with lefse or don’t show up at all. Well, that’s overstating it, but these folks are on a mission, to be sure. Still, I feel the pressure to make their holiday lefse experience a great one, so I will be up very early Friday, along with the few newspaper carriers left, and rolling all day just to fill my orders.

I love it, by the way. This is game time!!

Now is the time for all good lefse makers to rise up and roll out the lefse. Maybe you have had your day-long lefse fest, or maybe your marathon awaits. Either way, here are four tips to help ensure that you can go the distance.

• Get a standing mat. I got my anti-fatigue mat from Uline, and it is a blessing not only while making lefse but also when doing the dishes afterward.
• Wear graduated compression socks. That’s why I sell socks, which I call Go Long Lefse Socks.
• Add a Lazy Susan under your rolling board. Get Lazy Susan hardware at a hardware store and install it under your pastry board. Or order the Keep On Rolling Pastry Board — Lazy Susan from me. I use one because someone said I should try the Lazy Susan. I did and find I bend and twist much less than with a stationary board.
• Get the Blue Pastry Board Cover. The blue cover not only makes it easier to avoid sticking, but you also use less flour when rolling lefse, which means you have less of a mess to clean up.

I know these tips are self serving, but I would not make these products unless they work in making lefse-making work easier.

In addition to the tips, during your long lefse making sessions, schedule breaks at least every 1.5 hours. Put your feet up and close your eyes for a few minutes. Have a cuppa tea. Call a friend. I also sit between every round and pump my legs in the air as I make the dough patty that becomes the next round. Finally, I like to watch some TV and listen to some radio. But I also relax into the quiet, especially early in the morning, that leads me into a lefse-rolling meditation. In this rolling zone, I solve all problems and think big thoughts. Pretty cool!

At the Norsk Hostfest last fall, I had the pleasure of visiting again with lefse friends Marilyn Lucy (standing far right above) and her sister Lanae LaBonte (standing second from left). I had not seen them since the pandemic started, but they are easy to talk with and time passed quickly. They are skilled at talking and shopping, I must say, and didn’t pull any punches when it came to purchasing a number of products, especially my new Keep On Rolling! aprons. I will let Marilyn and Lanae tell the story of how the aprons united the family at the holidays.

Our story started at the end of the Hostfest in Minot, 2022. We were still shopping Saturday as
the booths were closing. At Gary and Jane Legwold’s lefse booth, we fell in love with the
Keep on Rolling! Aprons. We purchased what they had left and had names embroidered for us
(Marilyn and Lanae) and Marilyn’s three daughters, Shanna, Taina and Kalli. We ordered more
and gave them to granddaughters and daughters-in-laws. Finally, we included the grandpas and
sons, all aprons personalized with embroidered names.

A grand total of 19 aprons!

A picture was taken at Thanksgiving of Marilyn’s family with their aprons. Lanae’s family, (sons
Donn and Robb, daughter-in-law Laura, grand-daughter Vaida and Grandpa Bob) will take
a picture with the aprons at Christmas.

Our grandparents came from Norway and Sweden. Our grandmother, Elydia Blomquist
Rystedt, taught our mother, Evelyn Rystedt Tande, the art of lefse making along with all things
Scandinavian. Evelyn passed this art to her daughters, Marilyn and Lanae. Her son, Gary, was
an excellent sampler! When Gary’s children were married, they were gifted lefse-making kits
and grills from aunts Marilyn and Lanae.

All three families including sons, daughters-in-law, daughters and sons-in-law are practicing
perfecting this art. We will keep on rolling!

Lanae LaBonte and Marilyn Lucy

I love this simple-yet-moving story. The 19 aprons are impressive, but even more impressive is how the ongoing quest of “perfecting this art” of making lefse, as Marilyn and Lanae put it, brings their family together in ways much deeper than what shows in their aprons. Well done! I have no doubt you all will keep on rolling!

I woke up this morning in tears. I want to say the good kind, but all tears are good. I once heard that your tears are recorded in heaven.

This morning, my tears were in gratitude.

This is a thanks giving, and I am limiting my thanks giving to lefse. See, gratitude is like potato chips. You can’t eat just one chip no more than you can thank just one person who helped you along the way. You start saying thanks and you can’t stop. Like Scrooge on Christmas morn, you end up throwing open a window and shouting to the streets about everything from the marvels of one little snowflake to the miracles of modern plumbing. There is so much to life!

So, I’m focusing my thanks giving on lefse and eight people who are foundational to my lefse life.

Jane Legwold

This is where the tears really flow. She is there at my side throughout our days and our nights, and at the markets selling All Things Lefse while I roll lefse rounds. I am grateful that she enjoys talking lefse with customers, and soldiers through the hard work of setting up and tearing down our booth space. But more than that, for being my foundation and life partner. Jane has seen my worst lefse and my best, and the best is yet to be. On December 30th, we will celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary. This is what I wrote on the inside of the ring I gave her 50 years ago: “See you tomorrow, Hon…”

Jennie Legwold

Grandma introduced me to lefse. Sadly, I never saw her make it, but lefse was always on the table when I traveled as a boy from Illinois, where I grew up, to Peterson, Minnesota, where she lived. Decades went by when I did not have lefse, but the fascinating look and feel and taste of lefse stayed with me until my middle age, when lefse called me home. The equation was lefse = Grandma. Everybody loves lefse, and everybody loved Grandma. What I loved most was her ability to accept others and herself, although if I were to have asked her about self-acceptance she would have simply chuckled. She was quiet, but not in a stern, judgmental way, and strong in a soft way that made you put down the pretenses and smile. When she served “a little lunch” that always included lefse, there was a green light to talk openly. She was what Jane Austin described when she wrote, ”Emma felt that she could not now show greater kindness than in listening.” I saw her in my dad, Conrad Legwold. And as I age, I see her in me.

Linda Bengtson

I taught myself to make lefse and quit because the stuff was soooo tough. Terrible! I called it potato jerky. A year after I quit Linda, spouse to my cousin Denny Bengtson, gave me lefse for Christmas. It was wonderful. I asked how she pulled off this miracle of making good lefse. She gave me lots of tips, but I had done them all. Finally, she asked what kind of pastry cloth I used. I said, “What’s a pastry cloth?” That was the turning point. She gave me her recipe, which I have modified only slightly, and with a pastry cloth I began making good lefse. And when I brought my lefse to family gatherings, Linda would heap praise on me — loudly, so all could hear. I used every Norwegian deflection I could think of to get her to cool it, but she was not deterred. After hearing these praises year after year, I finally learned to just sit there and take it. Linda has passed on, but it is my turn to heap praise on her. She was my mentor, and I loved her. I would not be a lefse maker without her. I cannot imagine not being a lefse maker. Thanks, Linda.

Merlin Hoiness

Merlin was Mr. Lefse long before I came on the scene. He was a grocer who, along with wife, Zola, did lefse demos in Minnesota and Wisconsin while starting Norsland Kitchens, a lefse factory in Harmony, Minnesota, in 1981. The factory featured lefse rolling machines invented by Jim Humble. These machines are marvels and are still rolling at Norsland Lefse, the successor to Norsland Kitchens and located in Rushford, Minnesota. Merlin taught me that you must market lefse, get out with lefse lovers and understand their passion for this food. He wrote a small book called 91 Ways to Serve Lefse and was a hoot to interview. He said in my first lefse book, The Last Word on Lefse, that as a grocer he “could never keep people satisfied when it came to lefse. This was before factories were making much lefse. … In my store, I would use the lefse made by ladies in town and on the farms. I was actually bootlegging lefse, you see. The ladies weren’t checked out by the public health inspector. He’d come into the store and ask who made my lefse. Then he’d have to take it off the shelf and throw it in the garbage.”

Bitten Norvoll

In 1950, Bitten came to Minnesota from Norway, where she was born. She made lefse for me from her south Minneapolis home and was the embodiment that lefse is a Norwegian food. As I ate her lefse, her husband Torbjorn explained why lefse was so important to Norwegian-Americans. He said that with early emigrants “whenever they left, it was goodbye forever. So they would cling to anything—old diets, memories—anything that reminded them of the old country.”

Bitten added that for years you couldn’t buy lefse in stores, so to have lefse you had to make it yourself. Going through the motions of making lefse evokes far more memories, she said, than simply plunking down the cash in a store for a lefse package.

John Glesne

When I first started making lefse, it was a bit intimidating that all real lefse makers seemed to be women. Would I ever fit in? John’s answer, by example, was an emphatic yes. Part of my interview with him at his home in Decorah, Iowa, was this offer: “Hey, wanna beer?” Using a wedge, he also pitched a golf ball into a bucket in his living room after he made lefse. He was an easy-going good guy and keenly interested in not just making lefse but in making good lefse. That’s what I wanted to be, and John showed the way.

Jean Olson

In my second lefse book, Keep On Rolling!, I interviewed Jean in her home in Deerwood, Minnesota, where she is known as the Queen of Lefse. (I’ve met lots of lefse queens, by the way, and a few lefse kings. And they all were beginners making the same mistakes we all make. So keep on rolling!)

Jean won the National Lefse Cook-off in 2005, an annual event that’s part of the Potato Days Festival in Barnesville, Minnesota. She won the contest rolling with dough that had not been cooled overnight or for hours in a refrigerator, which is customary, but was but a bit above room temperature. “I used to do that [roll cooled dough] but I didn’t like the way the potatoes rolled when cold,” she said. “Several years ago before my mother-in-law, Edith Olson, passed away, we both changed our minds on how cold potatoes needed to be.”

I now roll with room-temperature dough, thanks to Jean. Thanks, Jean, for your example of being willing to change your mind and trying something that can make lefse-making better.

Jean’s story leads into this tip: Do not to be a lefse snob. I have always learned from every lefse maker I’ve met. And I have always believed that there are many ways to make lefse, and not one is the best. As long as you are happy making lefse, go for it using the ways and recipe that are in your family or that you have found to be best for you.

Rev. Charles Colberg

I don’t have a photo of Charles, so a photo of King Arthur Flour is going to have to do. Because he approached me as I rolled lefse at a market and started talking up this King Arthur Flour. I had never heard of it and was pretty happy with the flour I used, which was the cheapest I could find. He pushed me to give it a try because it would do wonders for my lefse.

I thought it was going to be hard to find, but I found it at Target — at twice the cost of most other flours. “Oh, what the heck,” I said, “there is no price on great lefse.” I bought it and, well, bottom line is I will never go back. The lefse dough is velvety-smooth, and the 11.7% protein helps keep the edges on my rounds together, so that I can actually roll a round round. And being able to roll a round round is a huge draw at markets and is hugely satisfying to the perfectionist perched on my shoulder. So, thanks, Charles, for that tip!

So these are my Great Eight who have helped me make better lefse. Thanks to you!

Here’s an idea: On this Thanksgiving, each of us thank those lefse makers who have helped us along the way.

Many — many — students in my lefse classes come to class haunted by bad lefse-making experiences. They tell scary tales of being smacked on the hand when they speared a round with a turning stick. They confess to feeling the long, spooky shadow of a mother or grandmother who made perfect lefse and being intimidated when they rolled crappy rounds. Or they tried and quit in shame, putting on a brave face that it wasn’t meant to be … but always wishing they, too, could make really good lefse.

So I teach them, and I enjoy sending them off with loads of confidence, not to mention loads of their own fresh lefse.

Whatever bad past you’ve had with lefse, perhaps it’s time to look forward to your good lefse future. Not someone else’s good lefse, but yours. Here are six really good reasons to make really good lefse:

1. You are cool to your grandkids. You may be old to them, but you’re not some fuddy-duddy who is a wall flower at family events. You, the lefse maker, are the star!
2. You are in demand at holidays — big time! Not only does your phone ring as neighbors want lefse, but when food assignments are handed out for holiday dinners, you are not an afterthought, relegated to bringing boring buns year after year. Uh-uh. You are at the top of the list cuz you make really good lefse.
3. Lefse shortens long winters. When you’re bored and blue with short, gray days of snow, snow, snow and long dark nights of cold, cold, cold, bring out the grill and roll lefse. Better yet, do it with friends.
4. You are never alone. With lefse making, you are immersed in memories of fantastic lefse-making times with family and friends. Plus, when you start making really good lefse, the universe senses this and the world will beat a path to your door. As I wrote in The Last Word on Lefse, “Never alone, and seldom sad, the life of a lefse maker isn’t so bad.”
5. Tradition. Many people don’t have traditions at the holidays. Lefse makers do, and it’s a long and grand tradition. Food is the foundation of tradition, and your interest in making really good lefse will lead you to a lifelong quest for finding out about your history and culture.
6. You become royalty. Yes, I am the Lefse King, but I know a lot of Lefse Queens and a few Lefse Kings. There is not just one Lefse King, and my goal is to coach up students to the point where they feel they have a shot at becoming a Lefse King in their own land. Like me, you may not be wild about classism and elitism and all that, but that doesn’t apply in the very democratic Lefse Land where everyone has a chance to become a Lefse Queen or Lefse King. Just make really good lefse.

It’s time. Time to pull out your lefse-making stuff and start rolling the way you’ve been taught. And if you have not been taught and want to learn to make really good lefse, I’m here!

My lefse classes have begun, and my first was with Jennifer Johnson and Helen Priestly, shown above. They were naturals from the get-go but appreciated some tips I offered, and each left with a bag of their own lefse. In the class we discussed what the pastry board cover can teach you, and here are two lessons:

Stop the Sticking

What’s the biggest problem with making lefse? Sticking. Your dough sticks to the surface on which you’re rolling, and once you have a sticking spot, that spot continues to be a problem to the point where it wrecks round after round. The solution is my Blue Pastry Board Cover, which fits only on big boards that are 23 to 24 inches in diameter.

In your rapture of rolling good lefse, you may not notice a developing sticky spot. This is especially true when your pastry board cover is white. The lack of white flour that defines a sticky spot is not readily apparent on a white pastry board cover. But it is on a Blue Pastry Board Cover, as you see in the photo below. That dark blue center of the board is a spot that needs flour or you’ll have sticking. So roll elsewhere on the big board or re-flour that spot. BTW, you save flour and reduce kitchen mess with the blue cover because you can apply flour only to the dark spots and not the entire board.

Roll It Read-Thru Thin

A question that always comes up in class is: “How thin do I roll my lefse?” When I was learning, the response was: “If you can read a newspaper beneath your round, you’re done.” Well, it’s cumbersome to slip a newspaper under each round, plus newspapers are getting harder and harder to find. But if you use the Blue Pastry Board Cover and start seeing blue coming through your round, you’ve got it thin enough. Or if you use the familiar Bethany white pastry board cover that fits Bethany’s 19-inch board only, you are in luck. Bethany marks the board in red lines and lettering, and you know your rounds are thin enough when you can read the red print under your round.

To sum it up, avoid sticking and minimize your flour mess by using the Blue Pastry Board Cover. And roll your rounds real thin by rolling until you can see the blue or read the red print through your beautiful round. Keep on rolling!

I have four lefse grills that I use for my lefse classes and for market demonstrations, but only one was reliable … usually. The others were iffy in providing heat consistent enough for a productive lefse-making session. With the pandemic, I did my lessons using Zoom or had very small classes, which meant I could get by with one grill. I expect larger classes this year, so I will need to use more than one grill. This means tuning up my grills or replacing them.

My grandson Zo had a baseball tournament last summer at the Field of Dreams complex in Dyersville, Iowa. This is close to Cresco, Iowa, where the Bethany Housewares lefse grill assembly plant is. I called Bethany owner Roxy Svoboda (featured in Keep On Rolling!) and asked if she would tune up my grills when I drove home from the tournament. She said sure and even came to the plant on a Sunday to check out the grills.

Roxie fixed all four and my cost was about the same as buying one new grill. She said the grill itself will last for decades, but the parts in the electrical unit need care. Here are three tips:

• Rub the prongs with steel wool. The two prongs inside the shield attached to the grill can get corroded from age and flour dust. This corrosion can mess up the connection to the replacement probe control that holds the temperature-control dial, and getting heat adequate for grilling can be problematic. Corrosion can lead to a loose connection and burning out the probe control (see image above). So shine the prongs with a fine steel wool as needed to restore optimum connection.
• Use two replacement probe controls. The manual of the grill states that if your lefse-making session lasts more than 1.5 hours, you should switch out the replacement probe control with a second one. Temperatures near or at 500 degrees Fahrenheit over time are hard on the plastic of the probe control, so use a second one to protect this vital unit from burning out.

• Do not unplug your replacement probe control from the grill. I always used to pull the replacement probe control from the grill after making lefse. But I noticed that unplugging became easier and easier over time, which meant that the electrical connection between the grill and probe control was getting looser and looser. And this was reducing the heat generated on the grill. Now, I leave the probe control alone and store the cooled grill with probe control firmly connected. A new probe control should not insert easily into the grill; a firm push is needed and you know that the connection is tight. Repeatedly pulling the probe out and pushing it back in only loosens the connection, so leave the probe control connected to the grill when you are done.

I was making lefse recently to fill a summertime order and couldn’t lay my hands on my lefse cozy for some reason. So I went old school and used dishtowels that I inherited from my grandma and others. The dishtowels work fine but are not as easy to open and close as the lefse cozies I sell, and they are not as colorful.

I finished rolling lefse to fill my order, and I had one lefse round left over, which I let cool between the towels. The customer picked up the order, and, occupied with what was next in my day, I started putting away my grill, turning stick, rolling board and rolling pin. I gathered up the dishtowels and threw them in the laundry basket.

Of course, when an abandoned lefse round is in the house, a lefse lover responds … eventually. A few hours after cleaning up, I was hankering for a lefse round with tea. I frowned and wondered where that extra lefse was. I searched all over the kitchen but no luck. Had someone else eaten it? No one confessed.

Luckily, I was scheduled to do the wash that day, and sure enough, there was the abandoned lefse round wrapped and wadded up in the dishtowels. I don’t want to think of the mess had that gone through the wash — and what a tragic loss of a good lefse that would have been!

The lesson for me was to use a lefse cozy. You don’t wad it up and throw it in the laundry as you do dishtowels. You just pick it up and put it in a mesh bag so that the sewing holding the two cozy rounds together won’t fray with the agitation of the washer. When you pick up the cozy, whatever lefse is in there simply slides out. No laundry lefse!