From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishbread-and-butterˌbread-and-ˈbutter adjective [only before noun] 1 British EnglishBASIC bread-and-butter questions are very important basic ones bread-and-butter political issues such as jobs and housing2 bread-and-butter work is work that is not very exciting but provides you with most of the money that you need in order to live
Examples from the Corpus
bread-and-butter• In the late nineties when workers showed excessive interest in bread-and-butter issues, the revolutionaries denounced their petty-bourgeois, trade-unionist mentality.From Longman Business Dictionarybread and butterˌbread and ˈbutter noun [singular] if something is your bread and butter, it is the thing that gives you your main incomeThe paper’s bread and butter is reporting local events in a small community. 