Rye Road

The Rye Road now includes many new farms that are open to visitors and demonstrate the bread-making process, allowing them to make their very own loaf of bread, offering cereal porridges and other healthy and delicious dishes and drinks made from the powerful rye grains, as well as telling them about the traditions regarding rye and bread. This is the story of the rye grain – the carrier of Latvian identity since ancient times. Nowadays, we are aware of many of the valuable properties of rye, which inspires us to increase consumption of it both by trying out old and creating new recipes, from porridge and pancakes to gingerbread biscuits and sprouted grains. We still bake rye bread according to our ancestors' traditions, because we love its authentic flavour and it gives us strength. We take it with us on the road and as a gift when we visit someone. Latvians put bread on the table at every meal and it is an indispensable addition to soup. In pubs, bread is usually served with the main dish without ordering it. In finer pubs and guest houses, bread is often home-baked.

For more than a thousand years, rye bread has stood at the center of Latvian tradition -- not just as the mainstay of its diet, but as an enduring symbol of the Latvian identity. Latvian rye bread (Rudzu Rupjmaize) is special, the result of sophisticated, centuries-old methods for managing rye's complex chemistry and quirky behavior. To taste it is to understand, on the most visceral level, the soul of this extraordinary culture.

 -- Stanley Ginsberg, author, The Rye Baker (http://theryebaker.com)