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not sure how to serve bread safely don't
quite know what to look for when it
comes to bread today i'll walk you
through it all
hi there i'm renee d'andrea with new
ways nutrition and today we're going to
talk all about how to safely serve bread
to your baby there are lots of different
stories and pieces of advice i've heard
floating around out there so today we're
going to kind of sum up bread and give
you a good overview of it and how to do
it safely
we're going to focus on the texture of
it and how to serve it today if you're
interested in the nutrition side of it
check out this video on the best bread
for your babies and if you'd like more
help like this
make sure you check out my starting
solids course where i walk you through
not only what to feed your baby but how
to do it in a way that will help them
establish a great relationship with food
and help meals to be enjoyable for
everyone
so first let's start by saying all
breads aren't equal if your idea of
bread is a piece of white gummy sandwich
bread kind of like wonder bread and
you're worried about bread being a
choking hazard for your baby then you're
pretty spot on when you have a fluffy
white bread like this
even if you toast it it easily balls up
and can get gummy with saliva and that
is incredibly hard for babies to handle
and it's really it's somewhat dangerous
so i would really avoid the fluffy white
sandwich style bread for a while it's
going to depend on their developmental
progress with eating but probably closer
to 18 months to two years at the
earliest i'd say
so if we're avoiding the white breads
what is better
you might think that whole wheat bread
would be and in some cases you'd be
correct
but keep in mind that some wheat breads
have a similar texture to white sandwich
breads we want to avoid anything that
even toasted will gum up into a ball
the types of bread i prefer are the more
kind of artisanal breads like this
cracked wheat one that i have here that
i can get locally in my stores here you
don't want it to have a thick crunchy
crust
but this style of bread tends to have
thicker air bubbles that are much less
gummy you can see it just by pressing
down there so
another great option out there is the no
need recipe from the new york times if
you feel like making your own a little
tip there for you
my other favorite bread choice is a
sprouted bread like this one from
ezekiel
even untoasted you can see that it's
really not super gummy
like the white bread was and i generally
prefer to start with this cracked wheat
style bread here and then graduate to
incorporating this ezekiel bread but
it's okay to give it a try with your
baby and pay attention to how they
handle it and then adjust accordingly
okay so
now that we have the breads we want to
use let's talk about toasting them we
want them
hard enough that they don't gum up or
bend but not too hard that they're
impossible for them to eat
needing to work at it a bit to gum them
is fine but you don't want them so
frustrated that they give up because
they can't get any bread off
so let's walk through this
i've been toasting the cracked wheat and
the ezekiel here so let's check them out
all right so you can see here that this
one
it's pretty
solid and this is exactly how we want it
we don't want it to be
floppy when they're eating it but we
also don't want it to be so hard that it
breaks off
and then it's hard for them to actually
chew that so we want kind of the happy
medium like this same thing you can see
this one here so it's fairly solid
but it's not hard enough that we're
gonna get any
chunks if that helps you can kind of see
it's still soft inside but the outside
is hard enough to keep it substantial so
we're really looking for that happy
medium and that is what you want to aim
for
when you're toasting your bread
so
you can use that knowledge to test out
any piece of bread and you'll want to
keep continuing to toast bread for your
baby for a while you can gradually make
it less toasted and see how your child
responds and that's really how you'll
know if you can make it softer for them
so before we end i do want to encourage
you to serve your bread with something
on it i've got an entire blog post i'll
link for you in the description below to
give you ideas of what you can put on
toast but no matter what you choose
adding something to the top of bread can
help to kind of lubricate it a bit and
just make it easier for your baby to eat
no matter the texture
so with that
i'll see you next time
you
