The rolling pin has grooves in it, to hold flour for so the dough does not stick. It also works out air pockets.
Lefse sticks are for easy carrying and flipping the Lefse.
Some history of Lefse: Lefse originated in Norway as a flat bread. It has many different verities like sweet, plain, thick, thin, and being made with or with-out potatoes. In Norway Lefse is also called Lompe.
1 large egg 1/2 cup milk 2 cups all-purpose flour 2 1/2 Tbsp sugar 1 Tbsp baking powder 1/2 tsp salt 6 Tbsp cold butter, cut into bits 3/4 cup raisins
1 Preheat the oven to 400ºF. Whisk the egg and milk together in one bowl and the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in another.
2 Drop the butter into the flour and, using your fingers, cut and rub until the mixture is pebbly. Pour in the milk and egg. Mix with a fork until the dough is evenly moist. Add the raisins and give the very sticky dough a few more stirs.
3 Spoon a dozen mounds of dough onto a foil-lined baking sheet and bake for 20 to 22 minutes, or until the scones are golden brown. Cool for a few minutes. Serve warm with butter or jam, or a little of each.
A scone is a small British quickbread or cake. Scones are popular in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Canada. They can be made from wheat, barley, or oatmeal. They’re quite easy to make and are usually eaten with Cream or Devonshire tea. From our perspective, they taste delicious.
Here’s the equipment you need… One large mixing bowl A second one is useful, but optional - you can get by with one if you’re willing to wash it in the middle of the process. One spoon You need a spoon to stir the dough. One measuring cup A 1/4 or 1/2 cup measuring cup will do the job. One measuring spoon A one-teaspoon measurer will be just perfect. One bread pan Obviously, to bake the bread in. One hand towel This is just to cover the bread dough as it rises so it doesn’t get drafts or dust or anything on it.
That’s all you need, and it’s all stuff that’s pretty common in most kitchens.
Now, for the food ingredients… 1/4 cup milk 5 teaspoons sugar (or 1 1/2 tablespoons) 1 teaspoons salt 5 teaspoons butter (or 1 1/2 tablespoons) 1 package active dry yeast (you can get yeast near the flour at your local grocery store) 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 cups flour (get unbleached white for your first attempt) Corn starch or nonstick cooking spray (just to prevent the bread from sticking to the bowl or pan)
That’s all you need for homemade bread, period. There are some neat things you can do with added ingredients, which I’ll talk about later, but all you need is that stuff. Nothing complicated or “secret” or confusing at all.
Ordinarily when baking bread, I would mix the dough with my KitchenAid stand mixer, but making bread is easy enough that this is just a convenience, not a requirement by any means. Basically, instead of doing the kneading and stirring described below, I just flip a switch and this machine does it for me.
OK, let’s get started. First, you should warm up the bowl - the best way to do that is to just fill it with hot water, then dump out the hot water, leaving the bowl rather warm. Then, mix up the yeast according to the directions on the packet. Usually, it will say something along the lines of “add a cup of warm water to the yeast and stir.” What you’ll end up with is some tan-colored water with some bubbles in it, as shown above. You should stir this until there are no lumps in the yeast.
Melt the butter in the microwave, then add it, the milk, the sugar, and the salt to the yeast liquid and stir it up until everything looks the same (a very light tan liquid). Then add two cups of flour to the mix - don’t add the rest yet. Your bowl should look something like what’s shown above, where I have the spoon on board ready to stir.
Start stirring, and then add the flour about 1/4 cup at a time every minute or so. It will stick to the spoon big time at first - don’t worry about it. Keep stirring and adding flour until the dough is still slightly sticky, but it doesn’t stick to your hands in any significant way. Also, it should largely clean the sides of the bowl, leaving just a thin layer of floury stuff. It’ll look something like the above.
Now comes the fun part: kneading. Take a bit of flour between your hands and then rub them together over the top of an area on the table where you’re going to knead the dough. Do this a few times until there’s an area on the table lightly covered in flour. Then grab the dough ball out of the bowl, slap it down on the table, and start beating on it. Do this for ten minutes. Just take the dough, punch it flat, then fold it back up into a ball again, and repeat several times. I also like to take it in my hands and squeeze and twist it.
When the ten minutes are up, shape it into a ball (like shown above), then either clean up the bowl you were using before or get out another bowl. Either coat the inside lightly with corn starch or nonstick cooking spray, depending on your preference, then put the ball of dough inside the bowl.
Put a cloth over the bowl and sit it somewhere fairly warm for an hour. If you have a warming area on your stove top, that’s a great place to put it - set the warming area on as low as it will go, as I’m doing in the picture above. This is a good time to clean everything else and put the stuff away, but leave the flour out and the floured area on your table untouched.
Here’s what the dough looks like before rising…
… and then an hour later after rising, still in the bowl…
It should be roughly double the size that it was before, but don’t sweat it too much if it’s larger or smaller than that, as long as it rose at least some amount. Punch the dough down (three or four good whacks will cause it to shrink back down to normal), then lay the dough out on the floured area and spread it out in a rectangle shape, with one side being roughly the length of the bread pan and the other side being about a bread pan and a half long.
You may need to put a bit more flour on it and on the table to prevent sticking. Then, roll it up! The roll should be roughly the same size as the bread pan, as shown below.
Tuck the ends of the roll underneath, with the “under” side being where the seam is. Then spray the bread pan down with nonstick cooking spray (or coat it with cornmeal) and put the loaf inside of the pan.
Cover that loaf up with the towel, put it back where it was before, and wait another hour. This is a good time to clean everything up, then go do something else fun. The loaf should raise some more:
Put that loaf in the oven at 400 degrees Fahrenheit (200 degrees Celsius) for thirty minutes. When it’s done, pull it out and immediately remove it from the pan to cool. It’ll look something like this, hopefully.
Let it cool down completely before slicing.
Getting Started Making bread is easier than you think. There's nothing better than a slice of bread, fresh from the oven, with butter on it. Our video shows you how.
In a small bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water. Let stand until creamy, about 10 minutes.
In a large bowl, combine the yeast mixture with the sugar, salt, egg and 1 cup flour; stir well to combine. Stir in the remaining flour, 1/2 cup at a time, beating well with each addition. When the dough has pulled together, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic, about 8 minutes. Cover with a damp cloth and let rest for 10 minutes.
Lightly grease an 8x8 inch square baking pan. Roll dough out on a lightly floured surface to 1/4 inch thick rectangle. Smear the dough with butter and sprinkle with cinnamon and brown sugar. Roll up the dough along the long edge until it forms a roll. Slice the roll into 16 equal size pieces and place them in the pan with the cut side up.
Cover pan with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight or cover and let rise at room temperature until doubled in volume, about 45 minutes.
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Bake rolls until golden brown, about 20 minutes.
The Best Cinnamon Rolls Ever Maybe not the best, but they're close. And after tasting them, we know they're worth the effort. Here's how:
1 large tart baking apple (such as Granny Smith), peeled, cored, cut into 1/4-inch dice 3 Tbsp dried currants 2 Tbsp chopped walnuts 1/4 cup sugar 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon corn starch 1/4 cup apple sauce 1/8 teaspoon vanilla
1 frozen puff pastry sheet, thawed OR 2 pâte brisée dough recipes (enough for a double crust pie) 2 Tbsp butter, cut into bits
1 large egg, lightly beaten 1 teaspoon milk
Method
1 Put oven rack in lower third of oven and pre-heat oven to 400°F. Butter a large baking sheet.
2 In a medium bowl, mix together apples, currants, and walnuts with the sugar, cinnamon, and corn starch, making sure the fruit and nuts are well coated. Mix in the apple sauce and vanilla.
3a Unfold the thawed pastry sheet on a lightly floured surface. Depending on the size of your puff pastry sheet you are going to want to cut the sheet into either four 5-inch-by-5-inch or six 4-inch-by-4-inch squares.
3b Roll out your pie dough on a lightly floured surface to a 16x11 inch rectangle. Trim the edges to 15x10 inches and cut into six 5x5-inch squares.
4 Divide the apple mixture among the squares, leaving a 1-inch border. If you are using an already prepared puff pastry sheet, dot the mixture in each pastry with a little butter. (If you are using a butter pie dough, you can skip adding the extra butter.) In a small bowl mix the beaten egg with a teaspoon of milk. Use a pastry brush to brush the egg mixture on the border of the pastry.
5 Fold each pastry into a triangle, enclosing the filling, and crimp edges with a fork. Brush the tops of the pastries with more of the egg wash. Cut 2 or 3 small steam vents in the top of each turnover.
6 Place the pastries in the oven and bake at 400°F for 20 minutes, or until puffed and golden.
Cook, peel, and rice 10 lbs of potatoes.
Add salt.
Add sugar
Add the butter
Mash with fingers
Keep on mashing until the butter is incorporated.
Add enough flour until it forms a ball and is just a little sticky and nice and smooth
not like that- too sticky
yes, like that
Careful it gets messy
Roll out as thin a possible with a rolling pin with ridges in it. Then roll up with a Lefse stick.
Unroll on an un-greased griddle set to about 400 degrease.
Cook until golden brown underneath then flip and repeat.
When you're done cooking, fold in half and again to make a triangle. Then put under towels to keep worm.
Wipe of pan and repeat
Spread some butter on one and add sugar or just add jelly.
