Lots of lefse

COEUR d’ALENE — Pam Hunt admitted it. Quietly, but she admitted it.

“I don’t really care for lefse, myself,” she said Wednesday afternoon at Trinity Lutheran Church. “I didn’t grow up with it. I don’t really have a taste for it.”

Yet, there she was, turning a bowl of dough into smaller hockey-puck-sized portions. One by one by one. Over and over. For hours.

“We call it making balls,” she said, laughing.

Hunt has for a decade been part of the crew that annually makes the Norwegian flatbread that will be sold at the church bazaar, this year set for Nov. 4.

She’s tackled many roles, from mixing to rolling to flipping and cooling. She does it for the camaraderie, the fun and because she knows that for many, there is a love of lefse.

“Some people really like it,” Hunt said.

About 20 volunteers on Wednesday began turning 300 pounds of potatoes into more than 600 rounds of lefse that will be sold, four to a package, for $10 each.

They expect to wrap up their task by Friday.

While the lefse sale is a fundraiser led by the women’s group of Trinity Lutheran Church, it’s a process that starts with the men relegated to potato duty in the basement.

Tad Johnson explains that some of the potatoes they washed, boiled, peeled and grated were rejected and sent back down by the women upstairs. Not good enough.

Too chunky, too thick, which makes it difficult to roll flat and thin, which is critical to lefse.

“They come down and tell us what we're doing wrong,” Johnson said, laughing.

He’s been doing this more than 10 years and enjoys joking with his colleagues like Richard Jurvelin, another long-timer.

“He’s been here since God,” Johnson said.

They do it because of what might happen if they didn’t, he said.

“The community expects it,” Johnson said, smiling. “If we stopped, there were be an uproar. If you thought the riots in Washington, D.C., were bad, you’d have it worse here.”

Sharon Alexander, this year’s project coordinator along with Bev Knutson, said the lefse recipe is tried and true. She referred to it as a “non-sweet pastry."

“I’m sure it goes back to the old country,” she said. “We know what works and we stay the course.”

Each batch is carefully measured. It calls for nine cups of potatoes, one cup of whipping cream, three tablespoons of melted butter, three teaspoons of salt, three tablespoons of sugar and three cups of flour.

After it’s mixed, it’s formed into those balls Hunt mentioned earlier, rolled round and flat, browned briefly on both sides of a grill, cooled under cover on a table and finally packaged and frozen for the big day.

Success depends on consistency.

“There’s no part that could be skipped,” said volunteer Jill Jurvelin.

On the day of the sale, it goes fast, Alexander said, literally within minutes. That’s why they limit it to four packs per person.

“If they want to buy lefse, they better be here when the doors open,” she said.

Why such a demand?

Alexander calls out to Knutson to answer that one.

“Because my husband's family was 100 percent Norwegian,” a laughing Knutson shouts from across the church kitchen.

Alexander said it’s important to continue the tradition of making lefse, which she fears could one day be lost.

“We’ll continue as long as we can. But I don’t know how many more years we can do it,” she said.

Alexander said those who used to make it have gotten older and no longer are willing to go through the labor-intensive process.

“It’s easier to go and buy than it is to make,” she said.

But for these volunteers, it's an affair of the heart.

Jill Jurvelin said she wasn’t initially even a fan of lefse.

“I didn’t grow up with it. My husband’s Norwegian. I very much learned to like it,” she said.

Another volunteer, Glenna Knepper, said adding butter, cinnamon and sugar turns lefse into a delicious dessert.

“I’ve even had peanut butter and jelly on it,” she said. “It’s really not that good plain.”

But Knepper said she’s not surprised people will be lining up early to buy lefse.

“It’s a pain in the neck to do all that stuff at home,” she said.