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brown bread
DCHP-3 (Apr 2025)
n. — Food & Drink
a type of bread, brown in colour, made from part of the whole grain (usually wheat).
Type: 5. Frequency — Brown bread is equivalent with whole wheat bread in Canada (see the 1978 quotation), though not the same as whole grain bread, which uses all three parts of the kernel. While brown bread may have contained some molasses in the early 1900s, post-WWII it was usually made without. So Canadian brown bread is, unlike Boston-style bread, not sweet (see the 1909 quotation) and also distinct from Irish brown bread, though the latter may have inspired it.
OED-3 defines it as "Any bread of a brown colour, or of a darker colour than ordinary ‘white bread’." and in the US "a dark-colored bread made of wheat or rye [...]". Merriam-Webster Unabridged lists as definition #1 "bread made of whole wheat flour".
As Chart 1 shows, brown bread is ten times as frequent in Canada, the UK and New Zealand than in the US, rendering it special in North America. What is not shown in Chart 1, for reasons of scale, are Ireland and South Africa, which would be off the chart as there the term is used even more (176 and 269 index points respectively).
OED-3 defines it as "Any bread of a brown colour, or of a darker colour than ordinary ‘white bread’." and in the US "a dark-colored bread made of wheat or rye [...]". Merriam-Webster Unabridged lists as definition #1 "bread made of whole wheat flour".
As Chart 1 shows, brown bread is ten times as frequent in Canada, the UK and New Zealand than in the US, rendering it special in North America. What is not shown in Chart 1, for reasons of scale, are Ireland and South Africa, which would be off the chart as there the term is used even more (176 and 269 index points respectively).
See: brown
Quotations
1909
Wm. Pearson remembered him coming over to McNiven's threshing when he was there about 1909, and he brought special brown bread for dinner. It was sugar-free and Mary would soak the flour, and strain it through a silk stocking, in an effort to remove some of the starch, before using it in the bread.
1923
[After a lecture on brown flour and whole wheat bread one day I was presented by a proud little miss with a loaf of brown bread. Alas! It was only colored with "lassy" (molasses).]
1951
When National Health Minister Paul Martin got around to answering in the House today the question asked by Stanley Knowles (C.C.F) in yesterday's sitting the Minister explained there was no standard requirement for plain brown bread in the Food and Drugs Act and it might or might not contain coloring.
1978
Members of the Dalum community are asked to please bring the following food for the noon meal, fried chicken, potato salad, jellied salad, fruit, cookies, and brown bread, and for the supper, just pie.
1994
When Joey Smallwood was on the Confederation campaign trail, he won many voters with the slogan, "No more fousty brown bread!" Always a foxy politician, he was playing on emotions aroused twenty years earlier by an unpopular program of the Commission of Government that saved hundreds of outport fishermen and their families from a debilitating disease.
References
- OED-3
- Merriam-Webster Unabridged • brown bread
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