Labor of lefse: Coeur d'Alene church crew churns out Norwegian flatbread

COEUR d’ALENE — Potatoes, whipping cream, butter, salt, sugar and flour. Lots of flour.  

The recipe for the Norwegian flatbread has become second-nature for the volunteers who spend days in the basement and main floor kitchens of Trinity Lutheran Church. 

At midmorning Thursday, Beverly Knutson was eyeing supplies on hand to turn 300 pounds of potatoes into a holiday treat to be sold at the church’s bazaar Nov. 8.   

“We’ve got 75 pounds of flour and we’re afraid we’ll run out,” Knutson said. 

Word came around the upstairs kitchen that extra flour was on its way, just in case. 

When asked how many total lefse the 18 volunteers would make, the estimate was somewhere north of 200 packages of four flatbreads.  

"We’ve had two days of cooking, but we don’t know until we’re done,” she said. 

With resilient helpers on hand, two waves of people arrived at the church Wednesday and Thursday, with early birds arriving at 7 and the rest of the crew arriving around 9.

“It’s a real process and they boil and peel and rice the potatoes downstairs,” Knutson said. 

In the basement kitchen, Ted Johnson was down to a full sink’s worth of potatoes left to wash and boil. The church group started with 300 pounds.

At the next station, Mert Barth and Richard Jurvelin peeled the boiled potatoes and cut out the potato eyes to remove lumps. 

Scott Tostengard used a ricer to remove as many lumps as possible and then Marie Bailey went over the “riced” potatoes with a fork to keep them from going sour before they were made into lefse. 

The potatoes are eventually brought upstairs to be assembled into the recipe and then left in balls to await being cooked. 

Ken Bailey said after a dozen years of making the traditional Norwegian dish, he just goes where he’s told on cooking days. 

“They get bored of me and they make me go back and forth between the basement and upstairs,” he joked. “In Norway 100 years ago, they would definitely look at us and go, ‘No, no, no, what are you doing?’”     

Pam Hunt said the flatbreads had been coming out expertly thin all day, so she was pleased.

“They’re the prettiest ones we’ve ever had, they’re so big and round,” Hunt said.   

Making the lefse always brings Dolores Johnson back to her childhood with her family in North Dakota and she said she looks forward to the camaraderie year after year. 

The group had made 116 packages, each containing four lefse, Wednesday and was on track to continue at a similar pace. It's not uncommon for volunteers to have to come back for a short workday Friday to finish the job. 

Johnson expects a larger-than-usual demand this year since they weren’t able to get enough volunteers to make lefse in 2024. 

“I can’t wait until the bazaar because people will be so excited for it, they’ll line up for lefse on bazaar day, that's for sure,” she said.  

    Potatoes are "riced" as part of the process of making lefse Thursday at Trinity Lutheran Church. The holiday treat will be sold during the church's bazaar on Nov. 8.
  

    Ken Bailey has moved back and forth between the basement handling the potatoes and upstairs cooking lefse on a griddle during his time volunteering at Trinity Lutheran Church. On Thursday, his job was cooking the potato-based holiday treat.
  

    Richard Jurvelin peels boiled potatoes Thursday in order for them to become the Norwegian holiday treat called lefse. The flatbread is a staple of Trinity Lutheran Church's holiday bazaar, which is scheduled for Nov. 8 this year.