Brown bread is a designation often given to breads made with significant amounts of whole grain flour, usually wheat, and sometimes darkcolored ingredients such as molasses or coffee. In Canada, the United Kingdom and South Africa it simply refers to whole meal or whole wheat bread, except in the Maritimes, where it implies bread made with molasses. In some regions of the US, the bread is simply called wheat bread in contrast to white bread.

Whole wheat flours that contain raw wheat germ, instead of toasted germ, have higher levels of glutathione, and thus are said to result in lower loaf volumes In Ireland, during the Famine, prior to 1848, brown bread was handed out to the poor.
In England, brown bread was made from brown meal. Around and prior to the year 1845, brown meal was considered a less desirable grain product, and was priced accordingly. However, by 1865, due to recently discovered health benefits of bran, brown meal's London price had increased to a point often greater than that of fine flour.

Flour milling Historically, brown meal was what remained after about 90% of the coarse, outer bran and 74% of
pure endosperm or fine flour was removed from the whole grain. Using slightly different extraction numbers, brown meal, representing 20% of the whole grain, was itself composed of about 15% fine bran and 85% white flour. In 1848 it was asserted grain millers knew only of bran and endosperm, but by 1912 it was more widely
known that brown meal included the germ.