The best thing since sliced bread?

What to make of this new product?

You probably already know that Estonians to this point don't yet have a single catch-all word for "bread" -- leib, while used in the general and proverbial senses, refers to dark or rough-textured rye, while sai is white bread.*

I think there's a time and a place for both, but as suggested in the clip, some people feel rather strongly toward either white or black. Restaurants offer four or five complimentary slices of both in the basket, just in case, after a nasty incident in a tavern in the late 19th century. For some, black leib is the most quintessentially Estonian food there is (and certainly one of the most yearned-for foods for Estonians abroad); others view refined sai as more civilized.**

Now, according to the commercials, siblings can get along again and the divorce rate will fall, as there's something that combines the best of two worlds, the soft crumb of white bread and wholesome rye -- neither sai nor leib, but saib.

It's a catchy brand name -- and a good bit of word-of-mouth is going on, too. Over Easter weekend, I heard friends and relatives talking about it on three separate occasions, even people who don't usually talk about what kind of bread they have in their pantry.

The problem is that I've had saib before -- when it was called Harvest Valley 100% Whole Wheat 7-Grain and I bought it at the Harris Teeter in Peoria. More and more of the bread you see in Estonia -- I'd say up to 25% now -- comes in square loaves in plastic bags. Some of the bags are paper with cellophane windows, but a bag is a bag. The loaves have no crustiness (whether from sitting in the bags it is not clear) and their density is about like foam rubber.

My aunt Virve, who lives in the border town of Persevere, Estonia, has a good rule of thumb -- if you can't use a loaf of a bread to ward off a mugger, it's no-good bread.

Saib is 100% rye flour, but you can't taste the rye. By adding dough conditioners, wheat gluten and air, Estonia's legendary food technologists have basically reinvented the wheel, replicating run-of-the-mill American whole wheat bread. Except it's 100% rye Wonder Bread.

This achievement makes me defensive.

Rye itself has been on the run as a crop, reverting to its original status of a weed lurking at the edge of fields of wheat -- wheat that now might have been engineered by Monsanto Global for all I know. (The EU recently approved GM potatoes, so the monster is out of Frankenstein's lab.)

Besides the growing number of square loaves, I'm also seeing premium bread selling for more than $5, which seems criminal.

It does look like koorikleivad -- a subset of leib that is a traditional rye flatbread sliced down the middle -- seem to be well-stocked, but maybe it's because they have a long shelf life.

Saib is a good product, of course. It's toaster-ready, unlike dense rye, which you have to run through a couple times and will char as soon as it will crisp. Saib is not empty calories or anything. It tastes good and hearty. But one thing we heard during the recession was that people were starting to bake their own bread, which to me is just fantastic. Bread-baking is a very wholesome activity. Some even grind their own flour. My small worry is that because it was cooked up by food technologists (with air injectors and various gums and proteins, saib is something that is awfully hard to replicate in the home kitchen.

So I hope the likes of saib don't become too dominant a taste. It will impoverish the diet -- and maybe the language.



* Whole wheat or sepik is a full-fledged category of its own, and so on.

** Many kids ask for sai these days, I've heard. Luckily mine are both leib people, but then again much of the black bread these days is loaded with sugar and wheat flour, so the gains are modest.

Not in the news 2009

Often disregarded by the diplomatic and business community in favor of the handful of national news sites and dailies and the 20-30 mainstream local papers, Estonia also has a variety of local alternative newspapers that are the hard-working stewards of the country's investigative journalism tradition.

At a time when many of the big papers are facing accusations of declining standards and control by syndicates, journalists at these small independents are reporting the stories that don't get covered by the national press with a fierce dedication to diligence to match. Existing mainly on low bandwidth websites and on paper in small-town libraries, they brim with stories that may seem mind-boggling, confirming that the country's reputation as "a place where nothing ever happens" is completely unfounded. Positively surprising indeed. I was in a library reading room today and was welcomed to an Estonia I never knew:

* There are currently ten moles ("possibly 11"; one has disappeared) among Estonia's senior public servants who "take orders directly from Putin". The main reason the Ansip government has remained in power so long despite its lack of popularity is because a "lengthy and massive" investigation is in the final stages. No one in the cabinet is suspected, but the Security Police, the country's most powerful institution, has requested that ministers "act as if they are just going about their business". The next few months will be crucial.(Läänerannik)

* The investigation is being personally led by Canadian-Estonian Andres Kahar of the Security Police, who is incidentally himself a former journalist (Pärnu Sõnumileht).

* A local paper in Rakvere reported the cause of death in the obituary of an 83-year-old man, who died of lung cancer, despite the efforts of doctors and the community to suppress the information. Foreign press observers consider it a "major precedent for Estonia". (Rakvere Teataja)

* An assay of the Bzonze Man, the controversial Soviet statue relocated in 2007, revealed the presence of refined coltan, a rare metal ore used in mobile phones -- and the concentrations increased the farther the statue was probed. ("Could the Bronze Man have been Estonia's Nokia?", Põhjanael, April 1, 2008)

* Although cited by officials, compliance with the War Graves Act may not have been the only reason the Bronze Man area was excavated. There is rumored to be an extensive WWII-era bunker system and communications station with tunnels connecting it to Toompea. During the riots of April 2007, with helicopters buzzing the area, the tunnel was sealed. (Harju Leht)

* Besides the number of meteorite craters per sq km, Estonia leads the world in the highest density of urban tunnels in the world. Even more oddly, some of the tunnels emanate from the craters, such as one underneath a Prisma store in Lasnamäe. (Videvik)

* Only a fraction of the tunnels were built in modern times. During the filming of Tarkovsky's film Stalker, a technical crew became disoriented. When they re-emerged, they said they had inadvertently wandered into areas of the system "not made by the hands of men", they would not elaborate. The brevity of dialogue in the film has been attributed to the screenwriters being "in a state" following the incident. (Võru Kino)

* A Soviet scholar, A.Kirov (attempts to disclose his first name have been unsuccessful even by the local Estonian press), called the tunnels "a subway system without trains, an eighth wonder of the world". Sadly, most of the entrances are blocked; it is unclear how stable they are. Spelunkers are discouraged. (Pelgulinnaleht)

* Part of the tunnel system merges with a 125-km long natural underground fissure, the North-Eastern Karstic Chasm. A reason why Estonia fell quickly to the Soviets in 1944 after holding the Reds rather successfully near Narva was that they lost control of the Chasm. The Chasm is currently controlled by Estonia's energy company Eesti Energia, which has also become the country's biggest buyer of cement. (Narva Kurjer)

* Ülemiste Lake is known as Tallinn's water source, but the city has two larger underground reservoirs that hold ten times more water than Ülemiste. Some geologists speculate that the cavities are consistent with a large pre-industrial oil shale mining operation. The capital city is said to be "geologically stable" although some districts are "figuratively resting on a crust" currently. (Mõisaleht)

* An amateur Russian diving expedition during the Soviet era found what appeared to be a deep hole at the bottom of Lake Ülemiste. Officials have explained the anomaly as a karstic phenomenon (cracks in limestone). They plumbed the hole with a crude sonar device but did not get a reflection. The files on the interrogation of the divers are in Moscow archives and remain classified. Estonia has unsuccessfully sought their release, including during the border treaty negotiations. (Sukelduja)

* The lake "continues to be the most heavily guarded public reservoir in the Western world". (Akropolise siseleht)

* A majority of English-language bloggers in Estonia are working for US intelligence. (Linnaleht)