TempoLife › Cultural foods of Estonia and Finland › Ruisleipä (Finnish rye bread)
Ruisleipä (Finnish rye bread)
What Finnish rye bread is
Ruisleipä is Finland's dark, sour, dense rye bread, made from whole-grain rye sourdough and baked as flat round loaves with a hole in the middle — the hole was for the drying pole in the old storehouses. In 2017 Finns voted it their national food, and it is still the bread on nearly every Finnish table, morning and evening.
How it is eaten
Sliced thin, with butter, cheese, cucumber or cold cuts; under a fried egg for breakfast; beside a bowl of soup; or toasted with butter and a slice of cheese. The dark crust and sour crumb are the point — it keeps for weeks and gets better in the freezer.
How to log it
Rye bread is one of the most logged foods in Finland, and our database carries the standard value: 259 kcal per 100 g, mostly whole-grain carbohydrate with about 6 g of fiber per 100 g. A typical thin slice is 30-40 g, so log rye bread and weigh your slice once to calibrate.
Closest foods in our database
| Food | kcal / 100 g | As it is usually eaten here |
|---|---|---|
| Rye bread | 259 | the bread itself |
| Butter | 717 | the classic topping |
Calories per 100 g come from the real rows in our food database (no invented values). This page describes food culture — it is not medical advice, and no single food decides anyone's weight.
