When I was in Russia (back when it was still USSR), it was winter, and they served water on the rocks. In any hotel, during meals, there was a pitcher of water for each 4 to 6 chairs, each with about 1/3 of volume occupied by ice cubes. Curious, I asked around, and got the answer that having ice in the water is some sort of fashion, because they heard Americans have their drinks on-the-rocks.

On the other hand, they had a great rye bread. I ate few other types of rye bread in Germany and Hungary, and they were all good, though I still wish I had this Russian type at hand.

Now when I came to the USA, I was very happy seeing at least a dozen brands of rye bread in any supermarket... which soon became a major source of frustration. Because there's caraway in each of them. Even when I found something called "German pumpernickel" or "Russian pumpernickel", they had the seeds inside.

Some of them are marked as "seedless" - but that only means there's ground caraway inside.

I like caraway - on pretzels, or in sour cabbage. Not when it covers the divine taste of rye bread. I've spent long minutes in supermarkets, reading the small print on the bags, and taking potential candidate brands off my list - there's caraway everywhere. So far I've found only two brands which come close (i.e. they are caraway-free and not spongy, and not too expensive). I once bought a local deli(catesse - why do these Amers always abbrev stuff?) brand, heavy two pounder - only to discover they failed to confess the key spoiler ingredient on the label.

Could it be just like with the Russian ice in the water? Someone thought all these countries where the recipies are supposed to come from all make it with caraway? It may be well like pizza then - I've had hard time finding traces of oregano in it, but there was garlic galore. Never saw one with garlic in Europe, and lack of oregano was a sure sign there's also something else wrong.

Or let me stop guessing and ask here: why, but why do you have caraway in all those sorts of rye bread? Some of them may even be great without it.