Whole-wheat bread is a type of bread made using flour that is partly or entirely made from whole or almost-whole wheat grains, see whole-wheat flour and whole grain. It is one kind of brown bread. Synonyms or near-synonyms for whole-wheat bread elsewhere in the world (such as for example in the UK) are whole-grain bread or wholemeal bread. Some varieties of whole-wheat bread are traditionally coated with whole or cracked grains of wheat.
The exact composition of whole-wheat bread varies from country to country and even within one country. In some cases, the bread is made with whole-grain flour that contains all of the component parts of the grain in the same ratios as they occur in nature, whereas in other cases the bread may include only representative amounts of bran or wheat germ. In Canada for example, a proportion of the wheat germ may be removed from the flour in order to reduce the risk of rancidity, but still the term "whole-wheat bread" is used.[1]
The term "wheat bread" is sometimes used to mean whole-wheat bread [1], but this is an ambiguous term because most white bread is made from wheat flour, and thus could legitimately be called "wheat bread".