Estonian Black Bread

Ask Estonians who have moved abroad what they miss and leib comes up before anything else. It is a dark, dense, slightly sweet-sour sourdough rye - closer to a Finnish or Latvian loaf than to anything in western Europe - and the word for it doubles as the general word for food in older usage.

What you actually see

• The loaf - dark, dense and slightly sweet-sour sourdough rye, closer to a Finnish or Latvian bread than to anything in western Europe.
• What goes into it - rye flour, sourdough starter, water, salt and usually a little malt or sugar, sometimes with seeds or caraway.
• The texture - a tight moist crumb under a thick crust, keeping for the better part of a week.
• How it is eaten - plain with butter, with sprats and egg, with cold-smoked pork, or fried with garlic into the croutons every pub in the country serves with beer.

When to go

Year-round, since it is in every shop. Supermarkets carry several long-established brands, all decent and cheap. Market halls, Balti Jaam in Tallinn and the Tartu hall among them, have bakery counters with better crust. Small-town bakeries are where the old sourdough cultures are still in use, and restaurants increasingly serve their own house version with the bread course.

Honest expectations

It is heavy and sour, and people used to white bread often find the first slice a shock. It also does not travel well as a souvenir past a week or so.

Not all commercial loaves are true sourdough - some supermarket versions are yeast-raised and coloured, which is the difference between a decent loaf and a memorable one.

Nearby

The Balti Jaam market in Tallinn and the Tartu market hall are the two easiest places to buy a good loaf alongside the smoked fish and pork that go with it.