Any bread of a brown color, or of a darker color 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. Shaks., 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. 130/1. Proper brown bread is made from undressed wheat-meal.
1873. Morley, Rousseau, I. 65. Presently, after seeing what manner of guest he had, the worthy man descended by a small trap into his cellar, and brought up some good brown bread, some meat, and a bottle of wine, and an omelette was added afterwards.
2. attrib. Of or pertaining to brown bread; † fig. homely, unrefined.
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 ideot, and brown-bread clown.
17[?]. T. Hanson, in Southey, Life Wesley (1820), II. 80. I am but a brown-bread preacher.
1860. L. Harcourt, Diaries G. Rose, I. 281. The Brown-bread Act.
