The Finnish 'rye-volution' begins in New York, without wheat or yeast
Simo Kuusisto with an oven full of rye bread. Photo: Nina Roberts
Published in the Guardian US on June 1, 2014
In downtown Manhattan, a tall blond man with high cheekbones and hooded blue eyes imitates a drug pusher, grumbling under his breath, “The first one is on me.”
It's not so convincing in a Finnish accent or considering that the man, Simo Kuusisto, is offering something healthy: bite-size pieces of his special rye bread, topped with butter, cheddar cheese and a thin slice of cucumber.
“Give a sample and they’re hooked,” he says.
Kuusisto is the baker and owner of Nordic Breads. He is trying to start what he calls a "rye-volution"; the battlefield is at his Union Square Greenmarket stand, where he is selling Finnish bread under a banner reading, “Discover the Power of Rye!”
Any native New Yorker may regard this effort with skepticism. New York's heritage includes the vast waves of Jewish immigration to the Lower East Side, where rye bread is the chosen sheath for Reubens and hot pastramis. What can a Finn teach New York about rye bread?
Plenty, it turns out. New York City could see its collective rye bread belief system rocked to its very core if Kuusisto’s plan pans out.
What New Yorkers believe to be rye bread is typically made with only 20% rye flour; the rest comes from plain white flour.
This fact – sure to convert any health-conscious New Yorker – gives Kuusisto what he needs to become something like the Oprah of bread. As customers lunge for samples of his rye, Kuusisto manages to engage the steady flow of people with ease, exchanging money for bread, dimples flashing on his face when he smiles. This defies the stereotype of the small-talk challenged Finn. He eagerly sums up the numerous studies in Finland and Sweden that show rye – Ruis, the Nordic kind– has four times more soluble fiber than wheat; when diabetics eat it, blood sugar levels remain steady. It's wheat-free and has no yeast.
He has a touch of the showman. Kuusisto has peppered the Nordic Bread’s website with the word “ryevolution” and his iPhone emails end with “Sent from my ryePhone4” and “Connected with Rye-Fi”. He wears a custom made baseball cap featuring the Superman insignia on the front but with an “R” for Ruis and “NB” on the side for Nordic Breads, or “no bull”, he says proudly.
“Not too many have ever tasted bread like this,” says Kuusisto.
He seems to be in the right historical moment, where the interest in natural foods has grown. The coarse, dark, labor-intensively chewy rye bread has been stealthily muscling its way into the city’s competitive artisan bread market.
That's why Kuusisto, 47, looks like he is living an entrepreneur's dream, avoiding most "obstacle courses", as he says, on his way to greenmarket glory. Kuusisto arrived in New York City in 1987 to attend the French Culinary Institute; then cooked at esteemed restaurants like Swedish Aquavit, followed by two permanent missions to the UN. While a staff chef, Kuusisto periodically baked Finnish rye simply because he missed the taste. Kuusisto kept his staff chef job while growing Nordic Breads until 2013; he was confident Nordic breads was a viable business and resigned.
Ruis rye Finnish bread at the Nordic Breads kitchen in Queens. Photo: Nina Roberts
Was he scared to walk away from a steady paycheck? “Yes”, Kuusisto states, lapsing into Finnish minimalism.
Thanks to his pushing at greenmarkets, his bread found its way to Whole Foods, and Dean & DeLuca takes four products from the 200 samples they receive per month according to Amina Cush, the retail marketing manager.
But fashion only goes so far. Andy White, the Whole Foods bread buyer at the Tribeca location describes Kuusisto's Ruis, which sells four small rounds for $4.95, as having a cult following.
“It’s not a big money maker,” says White and adds it’s a “pain in the butt” to carry because its short shelf life. “The rye customers are similar to vegan customers – they are very vocal with demand but not with the wallet,” says White in a slightly resigned tone.
There are, naturally, still growing pains. Americans, even sophisticated ones, seem to be mystified by the concept of real bread, not optimized for shipping and giant markets.
His biggest challenge so far has been to convince customers that bread is allowed to be slightly hard and have a short shelf life due to lack of preservatives.
“Some people think bread should be soft like Wonder Bread or Italian bread,” says Kuusisto.
He gets frustrated when potential customers quiz him about how long Ruis stays fresh.
“What kind of fucking question is that?” Kuusisto asks rhetorically, likening it to asking how long a tomato stays fresh, “Until it goes bad, so eat it before!”
Obviously, Americans are Finnish rye novices. Sasu Laukkonen, the chef and owner of Chef & Sommelier, a Michelin-starred Helsinki restaurant who’s heard about Kuusisto’s Ruis says Finnish rye is best on it’s second of third day.
“It has to be a bit … going sort of gnarly to eat it,” explains Laukkonen, “Because if it’s too fresh, it’s too moist, it has to dry a little.”
Kuusisto does have a sense of humor, though it just might not be recognized as such for the uninitiated. When the umpteenth green market customer asks Kuusisto if there are seeds in the Ruis, he’ll sometimes feign ignorance: “What are you talking about?” That prompts the customer to earnestly explain New York deli rye to the stone-faced foreigner, who eventually smiles and laughs.
For all that most of his mail-order customers have Scandinavian names, Kuusisto’s overhead is low. He rents space at Entrepreneur Space, a communal kitchen located on an industrial Long Island City street and bakes at night.
Amid the smell of baking rye from the huge ovens and top 40 Latin pop blasting from a radio, flour dusted workers in hairnets, some American born, others Latin American immigrants, load rye rounds in and out of the ovens. The mood is serious and focused. Clipboard in hand, Kuusisto intensely monitors the baking, cooling, slicing and packaging, offering instructions in a minimum of words.
Nordic Breads has evolved in a steady, strong, measured way. “One can bump one, two million into a business and build a factory, that’s another route. But who can do that?” muses Kuusisto.
Nordic Bread’s slow, non-flashy growth is quite like “sisu”, the well-known Finnish characteristic which roughly translates to determination and perseverance.
“It means that if a Finnish guy needs to go through a mountain, he will,” explains Kuusisto, noting with a laugh that after all, they have been eating rye bread all those years.