Brandon Lutheran Church carries on lefse-making tradition

Every year, dozens of women gather in the basement of the Brandon Lutheran Church for a four-day affair of lefse making and fellowship. 

The group makes the traditional Norwegian dish to be frozen and sold at the annual Heritage dinner the church typically stages each October and this year, they’re using over 350 pounds of potatoes to do it. 

“We always sell out, we never have enough,” Marian Horr said. “There’s much conversation being done and it’s great. The fellowship that goes on here is just awesome”

Horr is on the lefse committee for the church and has been leading the baking event since 2015, but she’s had her hand in the large-scale lefse-making process since 2004. She runs a tight ship to keep the 30-year tradition alive and running smoothly. Stations are set up around the basement kitchen for peeling potatoes, forming the patties to the exact size and texture, cooking, cooling, quality control and packaging.

“It runs like a factory and it’s her doing. She’s got everything all set up and ready,” Marilyn Abraham said. “She’s the lefse lady!”

The pandemic either extremely reduced or entirely halted the lefse baking days in 2020 and 2021, which makes 2022 the first year they’ve been able to do their entire four-day event in three years. In 2019, the group rolled out 1,753 rounds of lefse that they packaged in threes and sold for the Heritage dinner. They made $3,539 that year in sales, which goes towards Brandon Lutheran’s Women of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (WELCA) chapter.

Horr keeps track of these records in the ‘Lefse Log,’ her prized book that documents every person that volunteered that year, how much lefse they made, how much they sold, photos and a small narrative written by Horr herself about the notable stories from that year. 

Over the years, WELCA has taken any left-over money from the Heritage sales to purchase new baking equipment specific for lefse making. They now have uniform rolling pins, pastry clothes and cooling cloths with “Lefse is beautiful” printed in a traditional Norwegian design. 

Some, like Elaine Oolman, choose to bring their own tools they use to make lefse at home to the church. Oolman’s lefse-themed cooling cloths that her family bought for her, say “I Roll You Flip” and “Make Lefse Not War.” 

“This is my first year learning other things like how to mix it up and how to know when it’s ready to make it into balls and stuff, so there’s always something new to learn,” said Oolman, who’s made lefse all her life and helped at BLC for five years. “I really like coming, mostly it’s just to hang out with the women and talk and laugh.”

Deb Klein learned how to make lefse with her grandma when she was 10 years old. She started volunteering for the lefse making days at the church once she retired seven years ago and has since perfected the consistency for the potato and flour mixture and forming the potato patties. 

“This is a little different process than what my grandma taught me, but it’s similar. It’s the feel of the dough,” she said. “I know it’s done when I stick my fingers in here and they come up and they’re clean.”

The dough-making process is one of the most important steps in lefse making. If the dough gets too wet or too dry or the patties are not in the perfect ⅓ cup shape, it could affect how well the lefse round cooks.

“This is an important process, well every process is an important process, but if it isn’t mixed, right, then we have trouble on our grills,” Horr said. “We’re real particular, if you notice, they’re all using a measuring cup, and it’s a third of a cup and that’s how it has to be.” 

Most of the women have been making lefse at the church for many years, but Moni Watson has been involved since the beginning. Watson was recruited after she retired 32 years ago, just as the event was taking off and growing in the number of volunteers.

“The process hasn’t changed a bit; it’s still the same as when my mother made it,” she said.