Pain Demain was simply the abbreviated term borrowed from later Latin "Panis Dominicus" and signified high quality bread originally intended exclusively for use in Christian mass services. By the time of its use in medieval English it had already become simply bread of the highest quality, especially as purchased by monasteries and clergy who were obviously as intent on eating only the very best as on respecting liturgical requirements (the "mass" thing was a great excuse for going luxury on the bread front).

"Wastel" is the English variant on a whole slew of European Germanic languages' terms derived from "wist" (food) - in Norwegian "wesstbrød" is still a term - and which normally indicated the lowest priced and most popular bread made from better ingredients as opposed to those coarser breads made from half-ground or more grassy grains. It could be made from wheat, and in England that was probably the only version on general sale, but it didn't need to be. Simply cheap but good.

"Cocket" certainly comes from the seal imprinted on it. It was an unleavened bread, so resembled a biscuit more than a loaf, and was the bread favoured when provisioning ships. In England it is assumed that it therefore shares a common root with "cox" or "coxswain", though this may only be a coincidence.

The medieval English word wastel for a type of bread seems to have come, as with many other upper class foody words, direct from the Old French 'guastel' meaning a type of fine white bread, from which also derived the modern French gateau, meaning a cake made with good white flour as opposed to 'pain' meaning a coarse bread. In German, Jacob Grimm of the Brothers Grimm used the word gastel for "... a finer kind of bread ..." and gastel or wastel still exists as a type of better quality bread in Upper Germany i.e. Bavaria and Austria. In Italy there's also guastella (or guastedda in Sicily) which is a generally flat, always white and often sweet type of bread.

Gateau and its close relatives may indeed mean quality produce and even a sweet cake in more recent times, but it certainly didn't start out as such when you trace it back through its etymological development, at least from its Germanic origins, where its significance was in its staple role while using better ingredients available to the masses. "Standard" bread is probably the best way of thinking about it - anything made with inferior ingredients was sub-standard and just about everything else was above this standard. I imagine even for the Grimms this hadn't changed, though I base my assumption on the fact that this is exactly the meaning the Norwegian version of the word still retains.

That's really interesting.
It makes "pain demain" a way of saying "the bread of the lord" (not with a capital "L", in this case —despite the origin you reveal, nordmann— because its meaning has probably extended to the lord of the manor, instead of the one of the Ages —to remember the Magna Carta song of the 70s—).
For "guastel" I've found this, with your indications, Meles meles: "https://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/dmf/G%C3%82TEAU" and "http://micmap.org/dicfro/search/dictionnaire-godefroy/gastel". [I wish I could study ethymology, it is certainly fascinating.]

If you render pandemain as panis dominus (rather than panis dominicus) it does indeed imply the bread of the lord (of the manor/household), no?

Sure, Meles meles, my latin is an old memory, now. But it is a very welcomed warning, otherwise I would have screw it up in my footnote.
The idea is nevertheless there: bread for the Lord becomes bread for the lord —a known symmetry.

I don't think the "lord" pun was ever intended by anyone at the time - though the English do love a good pun, right enough. The word seems to have just got worn down with frequent use, as it were, leading to an extra challenge for etymologists later.

I was on a walking tour in London once where the guide, as far as I could tell in all seriousness, suggested Spitalfields once was the site of a large annual market (correct) which attracted all and sundry (correct), including the uncouth hoi polloi in great numbers (correct), whose noticeable habit of expectorating spittle in the area gave the field its name (shoot the guide).

Hello. CM -  I always read your  requests with interest and the erudite replies you get here - but at the other end of the erudition scale - me - I had always thought that 'pain demain' referred to raised bread made from the yeast dough set aside to start off the bread dough tomorrow, as was common in most kitchens since ancient times. 

I reckon I belong in the same guild as nordmann's guide.

Hi Priscilla; I had found a similar suggestion in that "demain", but I was unable to associate it with "fresh baked bread"; your proposal points to another possibility, quite plausible, by the way, but —I dare to guess— this might be a much later idea, prompted by the misleading sound of "demain" as a "tomorrow" completely detached from its "Dominicus" or "Dominus" origin.

All of the above assumptions have probably been correct at some point and at some location in England, I would reckon, over time. Words that lend themselves to several reasonably adduced semantic interpretations based solely on their sound abound in English. As I discovered very early in life when directed by my football trainer to "lam" the ball, which I did as hard as I could. For which I promptly got an earful from my mentor - who, to show me the error of my ways, "lammed" the ball so feebly that it barely moved at all. In fact he had passed the bladder "as gently as a lamb", his assumed etymology having reversed the semantic payload of the word completely.

I wonder how many people have baked "pandemonium" bread as a consequence of the same freedom to assume whatever etymology makes most sense in the circumstances? When my granny was baking this is certainly the one that would have applied in any kitchen she commandeered.

Priscilla wrote:

... I had always thought that 'pain demain' referred to raised bread made from the yeast dough set aside to start off the bread dough tomorrow, as was common in most kitchens since ancient times. 

I'm returning somewhat late to this discussion but further to P's comment, yes, there is always a long time factor in making bread and which isn't always appreciated when one just buys a 'freshly-baked' loaf from the supermarket.

A regular, natural, 'sourdough' or natural 'beer-yeast' starter takes at least 24hours to get up to speed from its quasi-dormant storage state ... but even if you are a regular baker producing loaves every day, many European breads additionally require a polish (usually pronounced polleesh) or a biga (biggar), which is a part-way starter mix, generally made about a day before baking, to pre-ferment/raise before all the rest of the ingredients are finally added. Even then with the polish/biga added, mixing, kneading, resting, punching-back, folding, resting again, then finally folding and arranging to shape, and then resting a very last time ... can all take many, many hours (especially when your kitchen is cold), before you finally get to put it into the oven to bake. For centuries professional bakers and competent householders of course made their daily bread as an on-going continuous process; with at any time having raw mixtures, part-mixed doughs and loaves all at various stages in the process. It is possible to knock out a simple loaf, from start to finish, in just a few hours - but not a light, air-filled, spongey, springy, loaf as demanded by one's lord. Having over lockdown tried to 'keep my hand in' breadwise, I speak from some experience: one does usually have quite a lot of fresh bread on the go at any one time, but often it'll only be ready to eat demain, or even après demain.

But yes ... paindemeine, payndmayn, paynedemayne, peyndemayne, payndemayn, paindemain, pandemain, payman, paymen, paynemayn, paynmain, paynman, paynmayn, paynmayne, paynemayne (OED) ... or however one chooses to spell it in English, it does seem to basically mean the best quality bread: maybe not entirely suitable and pleasing to the Lord (panis Dominicus), but at least good enough for one's local feudal lordling (panis dominis).

Nordmann seems to doubt the use and persistence of popular contemporary medieval puns into later periods. I'm not so sure. Surely medieval hagligraphy and religious mythology - with all its bizarre, phantastical stories seamlessly incorporating earlier pagan and celtic mythology (eg King aurther) alongside the conformity of Catholic doctine - was rich ground for Chaucer's and Shakespeare's punning and satire, no?

Did nordmann's granny ever cook soda bread?  It's a bread I liked but I haven't sussed how to make a gluten free version yet.

Wastel bread and milk, together with roasted flesh, was the diet Madam Eglantyne the Prioress fed her dogs, according to Chaucer. iirc from O level English lit almost 60 years ago, the "w" in wastel compared to "g" in gateau was a Norman pronunciation cf "guard" and "ward".

Meles meles wrote:

Surely medieval hagligraphy and religious mythology - with all its bizarre, phantastical stories seamlessly incorporating earlier pagan and celtic mythology (eg King aurther) alongside the conformity of Catholic doctine - was rich ground for Chaucer's and Shakespeare's punning and satire, no?

One place which held a mythological (or at least legendary) image in the minds of sports fans was Carisbrook, the cricket ground and rugby stadium in Dunedin, New Zealand. Deriving its name from the appropriately Arthurian-looking Carisbrooke Castle on the Isle of Wight, it soon developed the reputation for being the All Blacks’ most formidable fortress when playing home matches. No British national side ever won a match there although a combined Lions team did register a win in 1930. It wasn’t until the 21st century, however, before New Zealand lost again at Carisbrook, which was to the Wallabies in 2001. And it was almost as though a hex had been lifted because this was then followed by a loss against the Springboks 7 years later and against les Coqs the year after that. By then it seemed as though the writing was on the wall for the All Blacks’ favourite venue because the stadium would see its final match played in 2011 before being demolished the following year. For most of the 20th Century, however, for any team touring New Zealand, a trip across the Cook Strait to the South Island meant the daunting prospect of almost certain defeat by the home side at Carisbrook, dubbed 'the House of Pain' – i.e. the Pain Demesne …

… I’ll get me jersey.