What's a good way to cut bread into tiny pieces?
When my kids were starting on solid food, at a certain point they started being fed bread, for instance a jam‡ sandwich. Of course, that needed to be cut into tiny little pieces.
Using a fork and knife, however, wasn't a great way to do it. The bread would often tear and the pieces would stick to the knife, making a mess.
Isn't there any better way to do this?
‡ Aka jelly, depending on where you live.
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I asked my 95+ year old grandmother your question. (She raised 9 kids and the bread and jam typically was something she'd made herself.) Her initial response? "A child's teeth always seemed to work best, though nowadays I suppose you'd wait for a giant company to come out with some ridiculous new product of ready-made bite-sized things and tout them as safer or 'what smart moms or busy moms give their kids'".
When pressed, however, she did admit that there were times when she cut open-faced slices of jam bread into quarters, and she recalls times using both a non-serrated knife and swift strokes or the pizza slicer method, also with swift strokes.
There are certain kinds of baker's goods that can be cut into small enough slices (or even pieces) with a sharp knife - like baguettes or various breadrolls.
For example the breadroll below - don't cut it exactly in half, cut it into small slices and you will have several sandwiches with sizes perfectly matching the size of your kid's hands and mouth.
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I would suggest that, at the age of the child that jam sandwiches are appropriate, cutting into truly small pieces is not necessary for most breads. I gave my then-7 month old long strips of basic store bought sandwich bread (wheat, but not crunchy-wheat), perhaps 1-2cm wide by 8cm long or so, and he dealt with it fine.
Younger than that I probably wouldn't give bread except as tiny bites (and even at 7mo, it was rare - he's 11mo now and has had perhaps 1 jam sandwich); bread is not very nutritious, and at that age nutrition per weight of food intake is very important.
I did "open face" sandwiches - one piece of bread with something spread on it - and cut them into "sticks". They can pick up the stick and bite off a piece. I probably cut 4 or 5 sticks from each slice of bread (just like "soldiers" for eggs.) It's easier to cut them when it's open face, because you're not squeezing out the filling as you cut through the top slice, plus the child knows what they're getting and the amount of bread is lessened so we were less worried about choking.
The favourite thing for my kids to have on that bread wasn't jam or peanut butter, but the pureed meat you get in jars. YKMV.
Freeze it first... then cut it up. By the time you are done, it will probably be thawed out for eating!
Use a chopping board.
Use a bread knife - these have scalloped serrations.
Place the sandwich on the chopping board. Place the knife, blade edge down, on the sandwich. Place one hand over the blade back and the sandwich, thus holding the sandwich safely. Or place the blade on the sandwich and place your other hand on the sandwich next to the knife - curl your fingers (fingertips touching the bread) with your knuckles resting against the edge of the blade.
Draw the knife back and forth with a steady pressure.
Wash the knife with hot soapy water, rinse with hot water, dry and put away. Do not ever leave knifes in bowls of dishwater - this is very dangerous and can lead to permanent loss of function of fingers from accidental cuts.
All knives should be sharp. Counter intuitively a sharp knife is a safer knife. But obviously sharp blades must be kept out of reach of children.
As a matter of fact, there is. Use a pair of scissors.
If you take a large pair of scissors, you'll be able to cut it as fine as possible. And this method isn't limited to just bread, either.
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