Today is rye bread day.
You can see when it’s vacation time from the rye bread sales statistics of Ruokakauppa at Helsinki-Vantaa Airport. Antti Nikkanen
Rye bread has been voted Finland’s national dish. And it’s no wonder.
When abroad, Finns are known to crave rye bread. Rye bread is often one of the first things to buy when you arrive at the home store.
Many people hoard it as a snack when traveling or take it as a snack to people living abroad. This can be seen concretely at Helsinki-Vantaa airport, where Finland’s largest Alepa is located, says Vaasan’s press release.
– We have a sales spike in rye bread every time the holidays start and Finns go on trips. Another particularly lively moment is when you return from abroad and buy rye pods from the field right after the flight lands. Ruisleivä’s sales are especially lively around the Christmas holidays, skiing holidays, Easter holidays, Epiphany, summer holidays, autumn holidays and practically any weekend, says the store manager at Alepa Lentoasema Mirkka Vesa in the bulletin.
According to Vesa, travelers from abroad also ask for rye bread from Finland to take home every day.
Finns eat rye bread because they like its taste. Jenni Gästgivar
Finland’s most popular bread is also number one in the world
The most popular product category of Suomikauppa.fi, which delivers Finnish products to the world, is rye bread.
– Ruispalat is our best-selling single product. Every week, we send hundreds of packages of rye bread to the world, and it is especially lively during the Finnish holidays, says Suomikauppa.fi Laura Aho in the bulletin.
A survey conducted by Leipätietots reveals that Finns eat rye bread for the simple reason that it tastes so good.
76 percent of the respondents said they choose rye bread because it tastes good. Finns prefer to eat their rye bread as a piece of bread.
Finland has a rich bread culture. Bread information
Other reasons include healthiness (65%) and fiber content (58%). For many Finns (53%), being from Finland is also an important reason for eating rye bread.
– In Finland, rye bread is almost always baked from whole wheat rye and therefore contains a lot of fiber, says the executive director of Leipätieðutus Kaisa Mensonen.
Finnish bread culture can be divided into two main areas: Western and Eastern Finland. Before, the west was the area of hard bread and the east of soft bread. Western Finns bake sourdough rye bread in an outdoor oven or in a separate baker twice a year. Breads were dried on skewers. In Eastern Finland, on the other hand, soft, loaf-like rye bread was made weekly in the stove oven.
According to a consumer survey conducted by Läipätötningen, rye hole bread eaters still seem to be concentrated in western Finland, and rye pancake lovers in eastern Finland.