What is a Modern Thin Bread Roll?

What is a Thin Bread Roll?

A tunnbrödsrulle (shortened to TBR) is Swedish street food: a round, soft bread folded or rolled around hot sausage and mashed potato, eaten straight out of your hand – much like a burrito or a stuffed wrap, just with a completely different filling. The bread itself, tunnbröd, is unleavened and thinly rolled out, either half-moon shaped or rectangular, and roughly the size of a large tortilla. It's folded or rolled together right before eating, never in advance, since it would otherwise turn soggy and fall apart.

The filling always follows more or less the same pattern: mash (mashed potato) is laid out as a bed, a whole or split sausage is placed on top, and toppings are then pressed in alongside and around the sausage – most commonly shrimp salad (a cold mix of shrimp, mayonnaise and beetroot), Boston pickle (a sweet-and-sour, chopped cucumber relish with bell pepper and onion), mustard and ketchup. The bread is then folded around all of this so you can bite straight into the end, with the idea that every bite should contain a bit of everything at once – bread, mash, sausage and toppings together. It's eaten standing up, ideally freshly assembled and piping hot, usually at a grillkiosk (a stand-alone sausage kiosk – anything from a simple hatch in a wall to its own small building or trailer) rather than sitting down at a table.

The thin bread roll is usually part of the standard range at grill kiosks, just like the hot dog it builds on, and many consider it just as much a kiosk classic.

So What Is a Modern Thin Bread Roll?

A modern thin bread roll is, in short, a thin bread roll that keeps that same core – bread, mash, sausage, toppings – but refuses to stop there. The bread is seasoned and prepared with care, the toppings become more numerous and daring, and the whole thing is designed rather than just assembled. It's the same dish, just with a higher ambition level.

Tunnbrödsrullens Vänner (Friends of the Thin Bread Roll) has named Loffes Grill in Stuvsta the creator of the modern thin bread roll – Elov "Loffe" Bråtfors is said to have combined his flatbread with a newly bought mash machine around 1965. Presto Grillen on Lidingö, however, still lays claim to the same title, and can point to a 1961 advertising brochure mentioning a "Norrland thin bread roll." Presto Grillen's claim hasn't been conclusively proven so far, but Loffe is nonetheless the officially recognized creator.

So where do you find a modern TBR? Right now, the selection is largest in the big cities, where both the number of grill kiosks and the variation between them is at its peak. Out on the west coast and in Skåne, on the other hand, modern rolls are less common at the kiosks – the range there tends to stick to the more traditional. What the kiosks at the forefront have in common is that they get noticed and discussed in the community around Tunnbrödsrullens Vänner, who are usually the first to point out where the latest modern roll has popped up.

Three Tiers of Rolls

We tend to divide the world of thin bread rolls into three categories, and the modern roll mainly lives in the top two:

Traditional Rolls

Reminiscent of the street food dish's origins – relatively few ingredients and a focus on the main components: bread, mash and sausage. Solid, honest, no surprises.

Luxury Rolls

This is where things really get modern. Here, people aren't satisfied with just pushing the main ingredients to their limit – they add more, and more unusual, toppings as well. Seasoned butter, homemade sauces, unexpected proteins – anything goes as long as the whole thing works.

Signature Rolls

The next level of luxury rolls, designed by star chefs and TBR personalities such as ambassador Erik Videgård, offering a taste experience beyond the ordinary. The Videgårdsrullen at Brogrillen is a good example – a roll that's constantly evolving, from the Guilty Pleasure to the Jubileumsrullen with garlic-lemon buttered bread.

The Bread Has Developed Its Own Personality

In the traditional roll, the bread is mostly packaging. In the modern roll, the bread is in on the action, competing for attention. Double-frying, seasoned butter, browned butter – things that used to be the exception are now closer to the rule among the kiosk owners and chefs who really care. A dry, unbuttered flatbread simply doesn't cut it at the top level anymore.

There's also more awareness now of where the bread actually comes from. Local flatbread bakeries like Bergli bröd, Rättviks tunnbrödbageri and Stödebröd have found a new following among the modern TBR enthusiast, who's happy to ask the kiosk exactly which bread they use.

The Sausage Has Also Gone From One to a Multitude

The sausage has followed the same journey as the bread. The hot dog itself arrived in Sweden at the Stockholm Exhibition of 1897, where German sausage makers sold hot dogs to visitors, and up until the Second World War it was usually made locally. The wholesale industry of the post-war years then turned sausage into a standardized product from a handful of large producers – a trend that has swung back toward the locally produced in recent years.

In a TBR, the choice used to simply be boiled or grilled sausage. Today, the modern kiosk chooses from a far wider range of raw materials – pork, beef, lamb, chicken, even fish – plus a large number of vegetarian options, with Presto Grillen said to have been the first to offer a vegetarian thin bread roll. Günthers korv on Karlbergsvägen in Stockholm is often cited as a key player: back in the 1980s, Günter Schwarz introduced a far broader sausage selection than was typical in Swedish sausage kiosks, and is credited with bringing kabanos and merguez to Sweden – sausages that are now a natural part of the luxury roll's repertoire. Among luxury rolls, it's also not unusual to mix several types of sausage in the same roll.

Preparation also varies by region. In Ljusdal, it's traditional to split the sausage before grilling it – if you want it whole, you need to ask for a "rundgrillad" (round-grilled) sausage.

Mash and Toppings – From Standard to Statement

Mash has historically been the most obvious component after the bread and sausage, and for the traditional roll, powdered mash is still the norm – simple, consistent, and what enthusiasts expect. In the more gourmet-oriented modern roll, the trend is toward less mash, often served "stomped" or crushed straight into the roll instead of the smooth version. Partly it's about taste, partly it's that the gourmet roll's many other ingredients simply need more room – and a more tightly wrapped roll with less mash is easier to eat without losing the filling.

The toppings have, in the same way, developed a clearer identity of their own. Shrimp salad, invented in the 1940s by Ragnar Josephson and Tore Wretman at Teatergrillen (the same Wretman who later created Toast Skagen), is today the go-to luxury topping for many – even though Loffe himself, the named creator of the thin bread roll, claimed in an interview that the very first roll actually contained Boston pickle instead. Boston pickle, for its part, is a genuinely Swedish invention: Sixten Holmquist developed the recipe in the 1950s as a way to use up leftover trimmings, and the product – named by Wivi Peving and launched in 1952 – is still made to essentially the same recipe today. Shrimp salad and Boston pickle split the TBR community into two camps, and the modern roll tends to pick a side more clearly than the traditional one ever did.

New Ways of Serving

The modern roll isn't just about what's inside it, but also about how it's served and wrapped – the packaging has become part of the experience rather than just a way to hold the roll together. Aluminum foil retains heat best and suits rolls that need to travel, but works less well with the more acidic toppings often found in luxury rolls, and is also the worse environmental choice. Plain paper is the classic, most eco-friendly option when the roll is eaten right away, while wax paper is better at holding back grease but takes a bit more practice to fold. Plastic is, unsurprisingly, not recommended. In recent years, cardboard has also appeared as a packaging choice among kiosks wanting to give their roll a more upscale impression.

Serving has broadened too. Tasting menus – where you get several smaller rolls instead of one big one – have become a way for kiosks to show off range rather than just their single best roll. Brogrillen was early with its TBR flight, which later evolved into four mini-rolls served in a basket. In the same spirit are the so-called hipster rolls, where the bread and filling are served open rather than rolled or folded – a move that divides the TBR community but has nonetheless become a recurring sight on modern menus.

Know of a modern roll we should know about? Get in touch with Tunnbrödsrullens Vänner and we'll take a look.