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Raymond “Swede” Anderson, Missoula's Norwegian flatbread king, rolled paper-thin slices of dough on his pastry board, then carefully laid them, one by one, onto a hot cast-iron griddle.

“That's probably the thinnest lefse you've ever seen,” he said Wednesday, busily at work in his kitchen. “I say, ‘It's so thin, you can read through it.' ”

For the next four weeks, Anderson will be mixing Idaho Russet potatoes, flour, heavy cream and butter into perfect batches of dough. When that's done, he rolls it into a tortilla shape. It's so thin, it cooks in seconds.

Each year, right after Thanksgiving, Anderson whips up 120 pounds of lefse, a holiday treat enjoyed by Scandinavian-Americans. He doesn't stop until New Year's Day. By the time he's finished, he will have used 80 pounds of potatoes and more than 40 pounds of flour. He manages the load by working with 5-pound batches.

But he never eats it. He just gives it all away.

“He's kind of a nut,” said Brent Schlappy, who recently stood in Anderson's kitchen eating lefse hot off the grill and slathered in melted butter. “It's a lot of work. Personally, I'm happy he does it.”

Anderson, who has perfected his recipe during the last 22 years, admits it's not easy mixing 120 pounds of dough, which can cook up like cardboard if not mixed just so.

“You have to psych for it,” Anderson said. “Or it won't work.”

He has figured out the trick to making just-right lefse. It's all in the moisture content of the boiled potatoes and bringing them to room temperature.

“One time I made a bad batch and put it in the alley,” he said. “The cat threw it back. I thought I could get the squirrels to eat it. So I put peanuts in it. The squirrels ate the peanuts and threw the rest back.”

Once he gets his dough just right, he relies on battle-worthy equipment, including a heavy rolling pin, grooved deep with tiny squares. After the dough is rolled to about the thickness of a flimsy paper plate, the checkered imprints allow the cream to cook, brown and bubble.

Anderson said his annual lefse foray also requires the patience of his wife, Carol, who turns her kitchen over to him.

“We always have a white Christmas with all the flour,” he said. “It's such a fine dust.”

A certificate, dated Oct. 22, 1986, hangs on his kitchen wall from the Sons of Norway - a seal of approval showing Anderson has mastered the art of lefse. Inside the framed certificate, a photo of a 3-year-old Swede shows him smiling and rolling a pie crust.

He credits an aunt in Spokane for his lefse skills. In turn, he's taught at least 20 people. He said only two people continue to make it. Most people just wait for him. “Every year I get a package, sometimes two,” said Schlappy, who lives in Stevensville.

Although he mails lefse as far as California, North Carolina and Virginia, Anderson mostly hand-delivers it to friends throughout the Missoula area. It's a treat that can be hard to come by if you don't live where lots of Norwegians do, like North Dakota, Minnesota or Washington.

Chris Warner, who is half-Norwegian, grew up eating lefse in Minnesota. Since moving to Montana, his lefse-eating days have been limited. He counts on Anderson for a taste of home.

“Each year, I ask him, ‘When's the lefse going to arrive?' Swede's a great guy for thinking of us starving Norskies.”

He might be called Swede, but Anderson is all Norwegian.

When he was a boy, he was a rambunctious, towheaded kid. His uncle started calling him “The Galloping Swede,” a reference to former Montana Gov. Hugo Aronson, a hard-working, determined go-getter who appealed to the common man.

The name stuck.

Anderson, a handyman by trade, hasn't lost his boyish intensity for life. He has dressed up as Santa Claus for more than 40 years. It's his way of bringing joy to others. It's the same reason he spends endless hours in the kitchen making lefse for others.

It fulfills one of his goals - simply to make people happy.

“We need more of that,” he said.

Reporter Jodi Rave can be reached at 1-800-366-7186 or at jodi.rave@lee.net.

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