brown bread
1. Any bread of a brown colour, or of a darker colour than ordinary ‘white bread’. Formerly applied in England to bread made of rye or mixed rye and wheat; now spec. to bread made of unboulted flour, or ‘whole meal’, containing some of the ‘bran’ or outer skin of the grain as well as the fine flour. In U.S. ‘a dark-colored bread made of wheat or rye, either bolted or unbolted, mixed with Indian meal, and sometimes sweetened’. (Cf. brown baker in brown a. 7).
| c 1489 Caxton Sonnes of Aymon xxi. 463 Bryng me som broun brede & water in a treen dyshe. 1530 Palsgr. 201/2 Browne bread, pain bis. 1577 Harrison England ii. vi. (1877) 154 The next sort is named browne bread, of the colour, of which we haue two sorts, one baked vp as it cometh from the mill, so that neither the bran nor the floure are anie whit diminished. 1603 Shakes. Meas. for M. iii. ii. 194 She smelt browne-bread and Garlicke. 1615 Bedwell Moham. Imp. iii. §120 We do eat broun bread which is no way so pleasing in tast. 1620 Venner Via Recta i. 18 A browne houshold bread agreeable enough for labourers. 1849 Fam. Economist No. 19. 130 Proper brown bread is made from undressed wheat-meal. 1873 Morley Rousseau I. 65. |
2. attrib. Of or pertaining to brown bread; † fig. homely, unrefined. brown-bread ice, ice cream made with brown-bread crumbs, popular in Victorian and Edwardian times.
| a 1553 Udall Royster D. i. iii, Old browne bread crustes. 1606 Wily Beguiled in Hawkins Eng. Dr. III. 313 (D.) He's a very idiot and brown-bread clown. 17.. T. Hanson in Southey Life Wesley (1820) II. 80, I am but a brown-bread preacher. 1846 ‘A Lady’ Jewish Manual vii. 148 The ice should be prepared in a round mould—brown-bread ice is particularly well adapted to a Juditha. 1860 L. V. Harcourt Diaries G. Rose I. 281 The Brown-bread Act. 1875 L. Troubridge Life among Troubridges (1966) 117, I had a brown bread ice, which was one tiny drop of consolation. 1965 T. Fitzgibbon Art Brit. Cooking 201 Brown Bread Ice Cream. This was a most popular Edwardian ice-cream... The brown breadcrumbs give the ice a nutty flavour. |