Bread have a special taste or texture. At one time, all yeast-leavened breads were sourdoughs. Recently there has been a revival of sourdough bread in artisan bakeries. Traditionally, peasant families throughout Europe baked on a fixed schedule, perhaps once a week. The starter was saved from the previous week's dough. The starter was mixed with the new ingredients, the dough was left to rise, and then a piece of it was saved (to be the starter for next week's bread). The rapid expansion of steam produced during baking leavens the bread, which is as simple as it is unpredictable. Steam-leavening is
Finnish bread traditional in Finland, and it makes the best of the humidity preserving qualities of traditional rye bread by serving each piece of bread as a pre-cut pair of two halves, which protect each other but can still be easily separated. The brand is not without competitors. Two of them are Fazer's "Ruispuikulat" (a newer competitor), which are oblong in shape instead, and Oululainen's "Reissumies" (preceding Vaasa's formulation by about a decade), which are round. Both competitors are distinctly more traditional in formulation than Ruispala, mainly changing the size and shape of the traditional rye bread. As rye bread is the