The quintessential Norwegian Christmas bake
I look forward to December's lefse all year.
Dear reader.
It’s 23 December. Norwegians like to call it “Little Christmas Eve”. This evening, the nation will gather to watch the traditional broadcast on the state channel, aptly titled “The Evening before the Eve”, where politicians, celebrities and people who have made a mark in the last year chat about Christmas treaties and reflect on the year gone by. There are Christmas songs and – of course – a chef to guide you through all of the traditional Christmas foods. Anticipation is in the air.
I wanted to get this newsletter out to you last week, but I decided spending time with friends and family for the short while I’m in Norway was more important. So here it is, on the Evening before the Eve. A note on my family’s advent traditions, in particular the baking that comes along with them.
I’ve also linked to a few recipes. Two of them are freely available from my website, while two are new recipes and require a paid subscription. They’re seasonal, but not more so than being perfectly apt for New Year’s or even in January, too. I hope you’ll enjoy them.
A note on scheduling: I’ll be taking next week fully off. The next newsletters will hit your inbox in the first week of January.
Also, a final reminder that new subscriptions are 20% off until the end of the December. Paying subscribers get new recipes weekly as well as access to the full newsletter recipe archives.
With all best wishes for the holiday season to those who celebrate – and for a good week ahead for everyone else.
Vidar
It was usually on the first Saturday of December. I’d be in the living room, probably (definitely) watching sports, but really, I was just passing time until we’d all gather for the most anticipated coffee break of the year.
That coffee break couldn’t happen until my mother was done. She’d be in the kitchen, where she’d started in the early hours by clearing the kitchen table, covering it with old bed linens, a large, electrical griddle pan and a whole lot of flour. It was lefse making day.
As I write this, it strikes me that when foreigners ask me – as they inevitably do – about Norwegian cuisine, I really should be talking more about lefse. Forget the salmon, the game meat even. I don’t know anything that feels more quintessentially Norwegian than lefse. It’s a tradition so rich, a book on the topic stretches to several hundred pages of endless local versions across the country.
So what is lefse, you may wonder?
In essence, it’s a soft flatbread. It’s usually sweetened, but doesn’t have to be. It can be made from various types of flour or potatoes. It can be thick, ready to be spread with a topping like an open sandwich, or it can be thinner and larger, more like tortilla or yufka, ready to be filled, cut into wedges and rolled up like a croissant.
Lefse is always baked on a large griddle. Historically, I imagine they were placed over a fireplace, lending wonderfully smokey flavour notes, but everyone’s long since switched to electrical ones. In Norwegian, we call this piece of equipment takke – very suitably the same word as to “thank”. My mother bought hers decades ago, and has used it precisely twice a year since, both of them in December. Once for a thin potato lefse, and once for a thicker wheat based one. Uses we are very thankful for indeed.
The big lefse making day in the Bergum household was when my mother made what I grew up knowing as tynnlæms (literally “thin flatbread”). Made from freshly boiled potato, milk and just enough flour (preferably rye) to hold it all together to a dough, it’s my favourite thing to eat.
Making it requires skill and focus, however. The potato needs to be of a certain type, and you need to work quickly, lest the dough will start falling apart. My mother’s got enough experience to know exactly how many lefse she can make before the dough becomes too difficult to work with. On lefse making day, she makes two or three batches, making a new dough from scratch as soon as the previous one has finished.
Tynnlæms, also known as potetlefse (“potato flatbread”), is reminiscent in shape of yufka, the large, circular filo pastry used for making börek in Turkey. Because of the nature of the dough and the cooking method, it’s best to use a ridged rolling pin to turn dough pieces into thin, 60 cm (25 in) diameter circles, which are then skilfully cooked until just cooked through, but still soft. A special tool is required to place, turn and remove the lefse without breaking.
The lefse making of the first Saturday of December was a bit like an early taste of Christmas. Most of the lefse would be frozen to be enjoyed during Christmas itself, but while they freeze very well, there’s still nothing quite like fresh lefse, still warm from the griddle. On this day, there was no limit on how much we were allowed to eat. We eat them simply, with a little butter and sugar, then rolled up. Some (such as myself) also like filling it with a little gomme, a slightly sweet whey based spread that’s traditionally enjoyed with lefse. Needless to say, it’s still my favourite and one of the many true joys of going “home for Christmas” every year.
The second type of lefse my mother makes we call – and you may have guessed this already – tjukklæms, or “thick flatbread”. This one’s considerably smaller, but thicker and airier. Made from wheat flour, syrup and a ammonium bicarbonate, a raising agent still known as hornsalt in Norwegian (it can be made from the dry distillation of deer horns), it’s another traditional delight.
Like its thinner counterpart, it’s served simply. Being thicker, it can’t be rolled up, however, so it’s usually quartered and served like a closed sandwich with a cinnamon buttercream. I was delighted to be able to replicate my mother’s version when I was stuck in Istanbul for Christmas during the lockdowns. Because it’s smaller, it can be made in a large, regular pan, and I was able to make a couple of easy ingredient substitutions without affecting the flavour. (I tried my luck on the potato one as well, but it proved a step too far for my skills yet. My mother thinks the issue was potato related, but that was probably a generous perspective.)
In the last decade or so, a third type of lefse has entered our Christmas traditions. Pjalt is another type of “thick flatbread”, this one is typical of Røros, a mountain town in central Norway where my grandmother on my father’s side grew up. It’s slightly thinner, firmer and less sweet than the one I grew up with. The flavour and texture is quite different, but not in a way that I can explain (whether in English or Norwegian) – but that’s instantly recognisable from the dozens of other thick flatbread varieties out there. We enjoy this one like an open sandwich, usually with a generous helping of butter and Norwegian brown cheese – a firm type of whey cheese with a caramel-y flavour.
Now, these are only three types of lefse among hundreds and hundreds that exist and are still being made across the country. I’d love to say that these recipes have been handed down through generations before ending up with my mother, but I believe she learned the first two from watching cooking shows on television, then writing them down in her own notebook. The third she googled after enjoying it many a time back when we used to have a small cabin at Røros, on the land of the farm where my grandmother grew up. You know, the kind where water came from a well outside (or, if it was frozen, from boiling snow), and where we made a new freezer every winter by simply carving out a little cave in the snow.
Sure, there are many other traditional Christmas bakes, too. And I haven’t even mentioned any of the savoury Christmas foods. But to me, there’s nothing quite like lefse for Christmas.
Would you like to go more in-depth on Norwegian cuisine and culinary traditions? Being based in Istanbul, I usually write about Turkish food, but Nevada Berg has gone the other way, relocating from Utah to a Norwegian farm to write about Norwegian food and culture. Check out her website North Wild Kitchen as well as her Instagram.
A few seasonal treats. The first two are free on the website, while the last two are for paying subscribers.
Roasted salted almonds
So simple it feels like cheating, but ridiculously delicious. Many of my Norwegian readers make these as small gifts for friends.
Middle Eastern spiced nuts
With a little spiced heat and sweetness, these mixed nuts are incredibly moreish, if a little sticky on the fingers.
Norwegian lefse with cinnamon buttercream
An entry level Norwegian lefse, this one’s simple to make and doesn’t require a griddle. I’ve even adapted ingredients so you can make it anywhere in the world, but they still taste just like my mother’s. Delicious!
Red cabbage salad with orange, hazelnuts & pomegranate
A trusted seasonal favourite that I’ve made for my family every Christmas for nearly a decade now. Perfect with any roasted white meat like turkey or pork, as well as any Christmas leftovers.