breads

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of bread.

   Artisan breads lined the shelves of the corner shop.

   Flatbreads and other regional breads featured heavily in the cookbook.

   Note

   A plural that counts kinds rather than pieces: artisan breads, regional breads, flatbreads. In its everyday food sense bread usually behaves as a mass noun, so the plural appears when varieties are being listed or compared, as on a bakery shelf or in a cookbook. To speak of an amount of bread, English normally keeps the singular and lets a measure word do the counting.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of bread.

   He breads the cutlets and lets them rest before frying.

   The line cook breads dozens of shrimp during the dinner rush.

   Note

   A kitchen verb in its present-tense form, and it always takes an object: a cook breads cutlets, shrimp, a fillet. The spelling is shared with the plural noun, so "she breads the fish" and "artisan breads" look identical but parse differently. A second transitive verb, meaning to form in meshes or to net, has the same form, but in a kitchen context only the breadcrumb meaning applies.

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